Emergency Exit
Article 12 of the Basic Law about the Prime Minister has
been the subject of extensive review by top Labor Party
officials lately, more than any campaign slogan or
propaganda piece. They learn it by heart, subject it to
legal analysis and consult with various legal experts to
clarify fine points on the clause.
And what is this clause all about? It allows the replacement
of a candidate up to four days before the elections if the
party's candidate passes away or his health fails or he
resigns. Since the Labor Party can see Barak is in the pink,
they are counting on Article 12(b)--the resignation clause,
or, to put it differently, an emergency exit for use by a
candidate who can't seem to extricate himself from surveys
indicating that he is headed for a severe defeat.
Article 12(c) states that if "an individual who was
nominated in accordance with the law ceases to be a
candidate, the nominator is permitted to designate a
replacement within two weeks, but no later than 96 hours
before the time of the elections." The Labor Party has read
the surveys that predict Barak will be trounced by Sharon
and indicate that Shimon Peres is the man who can beat
Sharon. If Barak continues to trail far behind in the polls
over the next two weeks, the Labor Party will begin to
discuss implementing Article 12, lighting the door of the
emergency exit to avoid certain defeat and replace Barak
with Peres.
The main problem is that it is not for the party to decide,
but rather the candidate. He will have to resign, and it is
doubtful whether his pride and well-known arrogance will
allow him to do so. Barak will run until the bitter end. He
will not give anyone the pleasure of replacing him with his
great rival, Shimon Peres; either victory, or else everyone
else goes down with him.
When Binyamin Netanyahu announced that he had decided to
withdraw from the race for the office of prime minister
after the Knesset voted not to disperse itself, some of his
close associates rushed to scrutinize the same Article 12.
They harbored dreams of replacing Sharon with Netanyahu at
the last minute, and envisioned surveys showing Barak would
close the gap and even take the lead, and demonstrating that
if Netanyahu were to step into the picture, a Likud victory
would be assured.
This was not the case. For now Sharon's position in the
polls is very stable. Not a single survey, including the
Labor Party's secret internal surveys, predicts anything
other than a decisive victory by Sharon and a rout for
Barak. At this point Netanyahu's associates have been forced
to shelve their Article 12 dreams and stop entertaining
notions that Netanyahu can be brought back into the game in
these elections. Still, if something does happen to Sharon's
candidacy, if the impossible happens and Barak makes a
comeback and threatens Sharon's victory, Netanyahu's
associates would not hesitate to reopen the Prime Minister
Basic Law, whisk out the familiar clause and apply
tremendous pressure on Sharon to resign to make room for
Netanyahu.
War and Revolution
Apparently Ehud Barak's dream to reach an agreement with the
Palestinians before the elections will not be realized.
Figures in the Barak camp have long held that his only
chance of winning the elections is to make such an
agreement, which is why Barak was willing to take such
magnanimous steps to accommodate the Palestinians, including
extreme measures that verge on breaching the security of the
State of Israel--according to assessments of the Chief of
Staff and the head of the GSS--all to maintain his
throne.
Now, it seems even this will not help and the Barak camp is
making plans to return to "tried and true" methods: lashing
out on religious issues. Thus the return of the secular
revolution, a war against religion that is being waged in
addition to the scare tactics employed in his campaign, with
warnings that war will descend upon us if Sharon is elected--
as if the events of the past few months, courtesy of Barak,
are not themselves warfare that have left real people lying
dead and wounded almost every day.
Last Monday Barak arrived at the Knesset dressed in a tan
windbreaker, as if he were on a reconnaissance mission,
rather than Prime Minister in the standard suit and tie.
This attire is often adopted by senior officials and
important figures when they begin to worry that their
importance is fading or their seniority is at stake. That is
what Netanyahu did toward the end of his term, along with
Shamir and almost all of the ministers the moment they began
to lose their standing. The suit and tie are cast aside in
favor of the casual wear of the man in the street.
That same Monday the Knesset voted for the Arrangements Law
as a temporary measure to defer the induction of yeshiva
students. Barak arrived at the plenum hall with his hands
tucked into his jacket pockets like a military man looking
to pick a fight with lomdei Torah. During the first
reading a few ministers who had come to vote against the
bill were still sitting beside him at the government's
table. Many members of the Labor faction, both ministers and
Knesset members, disregarded party discipline imposed by
Barak and were absent from the hall at the time of voting.
That's the way it goes when everyone can sense that the sun
is setting on Barak's rule, not only as the leader of the
country, but also as the leader of the Labor Party.
But Barak went the extra mile when it came time for the
second and third readings held that night, following the
news of the bombing in Netanya. All of the heads of the
various security apparatuses and senior security officials
convened in the Prime Minister's chambers at the Knesset for
an urgent meeting, but nonetheless, when the bill came up
for a vote, Barak got up and raced to the plenum hall to
vote against the yeshiva students. He was almost the only
one sitting around the government's table, wearing that same
tan windbreaker and a fierce expression on his face as he
put up his stand against the Torah world.
At that point Barak already knew he would be unable to
obtain an agreement with the Palestinians before the
elections, and all that remained was the secular revolution:
agitation against religion and the religious and the Torah
world. And toward this end he had to correct the impression
made by his vote in favor of this very issue six months ago.
If he is unable to bring Arab voters to the polls, at least
he could unite voters on the left and bring them to the
polls, if not in the name of peace, then in the name of anti-
religious antagonism.
Left All Alone
Yoel Marcus is considered the most veteran political
commentator at Ha'aretz, and one of the leading
veterans among all newspapermen and media figures. Marcus,
like almost all of his colleagues in the media, is not
suspected of rightist sympathies. Last week he generated a
list, printed in the form of an imaginary letter to Barak
from his U.S. advisor, Stanley Finkelstein.
"My dear Ehud, I hope you will not be angry at what I have
to say. After all, you hired me to give you my professional
assessment of your position and your chances of winning.
Here are my observations: As much as I was surprised by
Sharon, I was shocked at the predicament you've managed to
get yourself into in such a short period of time. I have yet
to witness such an accumulation of resentment against a
figure who won such a landslide election a short time
ago.
"My inquiries show that there is not a single person in your
party, your government and your camp of followers who does
not hold a grudge against you and is not happy with your
current standing in the polls. The resentment toward you is
personal--the result of your arrogance and estrangement even
of good people who wanted to help you succeed.
"Based on testimony I have gathered, after your election
victory you estranged everyone who had helped you, by not
returning calls and not responding to letters. Against
everyone you worked against, you spread defamatory remarks,
and you must be familiar with the rule that says if you say
something to just two people, and each of them talks to two
more people, within two hours the information can circle the
globe. . . It could well be that your goal of achieving a
final settlement and ending the conflict in a single stroke
was your ruin. But I am acting as your campaign consultant,
and not your policy advisor; in terms of policy I suspect
that because of the acts of terror and the obstinacy or
stupidity of your partner, you have encountered an
atmosphere of distrust in which everything that happens or
does not happen is liable to work against you. Even the
terrorist attacks will be blamed on you."
Thus reads the comments formulated by Marcus in the
fictitious letter from Barak's consultant.
It is now more conspicuous than ever that Barak has been
left all alone. He has crossed swords with everyone. His
conceit and impudence have been his downfall. The man who
thought he knew better than anyone else and was more
familiar with every issue than anyone else, has failed
miserably. Even if a miracle takes place and he wins the
elections, nothing will change his seclusion and failure.
Barak compared himself to Ben Gurion, Rabin and Peres, and
therefore did not appoint a defense minister. Barak, an
outstanding political initiate, wanted to be like the
greats, but he forgot that Rabin, for example, before he
appointed himself prime minister and defense minister, had
already been already prime minister for three years and had
served as defense minister for eight years, as well as
serving as labor minister and MK for many years, not to
mention the long list of posts held by Peres.
Meanwhile, Barak spent just a few short months as interior
minister and another few months as foreign minister--a real
greenhorn. The absence of a defense minister in Barak's
government is undoubtedly one of the main reasons for
Barak's failure. He needed a defense minister at his side
who would have been able to devote all of his time and
energy to the issue of national security, rather than
turning the post into an additional task for the prime
minister, who is deeply engrossed in policy decisions and
other matters. But his conceit and overconfidence prevented
him from appointing a full-time defense minister.
Now, in an attempt to mend his ways at the last minute,
Barak has come to understand that the absence of a defense
minister was his undoing, and has hastened to announce that
if he is elected he will appoint a full-time defense
minister. There are a number of figures in his inner circle
who are experienced in the area of security: Amnon Shachak
(former chief of Staff) and Matan Vilna'i (former Brigadier
General), for example, and he also has the option of
bringing someone from the outside to fill this position,
with the most obvious name being Ami Ayalon, Brigadier
General and retired GSS head.
If reelected Barak would also like to appoint as interior
minister Yasha Kedmi, who served as the head of Netiv, a
clandestine organization that served as the liaison bureau
between the foreign ministry and the Israeli government and
the former Soviet Union. Talks over the nomination of Kedmi
are intended to improve his standing among immigrants from
the former Soviet Union. From Barak's standpoint, this means
the leading immigrant party, Yisrael Ba'aliya, and its
chairman, Natan Sharansky, who served as interior minister
until a few months ago, are irrelevant and will not be taken
into account in the next coalition. A more serious
implication of the talks over Kedmi's appointment is the
dismissal of the current interior minister, Chaim Ramon. The
last thing Barak needs at this point is to come up against
Chaim Ramon and his supporters in the party.
Sharon: No Comment
Last Monday Likud chairman and candidate for the office of
prime minister Ariel Sharon, met with the parliamentary
correspondents. He spoke at length about his ability to
bring peace, and asserted that no one needs to teach him
about the need for and the importance of peace, but he
evaded one simple, pressing question: Assuming his plan
offers the Palestinians less than Barak's plan, how could it
be that the same Arafat who rejected Barak's plan would
accept his plan, which would include fewer compromises?
Then last Wednesday Sharon set off for a tour of the Jordan
Valley, where he was again asked the same question. In
addition he was asked, when he said Israel would be forced
to make many painful compromises in order to reach a peace
agreement, exactly what compromises was he referring to?
Again, Sharon had no comment. Could it be that the Likud
chairman has a surprise in store for us, the kind of painful
compromises Arafat would be willing to agree to, despite his
refusal of Barak's proposed compromises?
