Politics Without Ideology

TEL AVIV —  More than four decades after sociologist Daniel Bell coined the phrase “the end of ideology,” Israel’s body politic provides a testing ground for his theoretical idea. Last week’s decision by the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, to dissolve the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu and call for early elections signifies the “big bang” of Israel’s traditionally ideologically loaded politics. But this change also brings with it political uncertainty and instability that threaten to derail the already shaken peace with the Palestinians and set off another vicious round of terrorism and violence.

There is little in common, politically and ideologically, between Ehud Olmert, the mayor of Jerusalem and member of Netanyahu’s Likud Party, and Yossi Sarid, a member of the Knesset and leader of the left-wing Meretz Party. Yet, both agreed, moments after Netanyahu’s Cabinet was voted out of office two years before the end of its term, that “we face the end of the old political era, where values, ideals, worldviews, strong convictions and ideologies dominated the political horizons.” Replacing it is a political landscape of hollow personalities, broken loyalties, shallow images and a desperate desire for a new face, a strong man, who will have the image of “political purity and cleanliness.”

That man of “purity and cleanliness” may be Gen. Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, a 55-year-old former chief of staff who only last Thursday was officially discharged of his 36 years of military service. He is currently leading in the polls, with nearly 38% support, compared with Netanyahu’s 29% and Ehud Barak’s 32%. Barak, leader of the Labor Party, happens to be Shahak’s predecessor as chief of staff. Shahak’s standing in the polls is all the more stunning because he has yet to announce his candidacy formally and to disclose his political identity and agenda.

Shahak is the lucky beneficiary of a change in mood of the Israeli public. More and more, Israelis feel a strong aversion toward political parties as they have known them for five decades. This disfiguring of Israeli politics did not happen overnight. It was a slow and painful transformation manifest in small but constant ways. Foremost among them is the decline of the two major political forces and the concomitant mushrooming of small parties, which has destabilized Israeli politics and society. For 20 years, the socialist Labor Party, together with the conservative Likud bloc, held more than 66% of the Knesset’s 120 seats. After the last elections in 1996, both parties collectively occupied only 54 seats, a 33% reduction. Most political observers expect the two parties to emerge from the April 1999 elections with no more than 40 seats between them. Shahak’s movement alone, which portrays itself as “centrist,” hopes to gain more than 20 seats.

The first Israeli leader to sense the shift in public sentiment and manipulate it to his own advantage was none other than Netanyahu. In 1988, he returned to Israel after a decade of serving in various diplomatic posts in the United States. He soon took over the leadership of the Likud and, in 1996, became Israel’s ninth prime minister. Two changes played into Netanyahu’s hands.

First, globalization relaxed the decades-long hold of dogmatic ideologies on Israeli life. The new openness brought to Israel world media, especially cable and satellite television; easier border crossings and travel; access to the Internet; and the rise of free-market ideas at the expense of the old collectivist bias.

The second change was brought about by Netanyahu himself: a new style. He hired an American political pollster and advisor, Arthur Finkelstein, a first in the history of Israeli elections. With Finkelstein’s help, he introduced negative and smear tactics to political campaigns. As prime minister, his lack of coherent policies and fondness for political zigzagging, amplified by his arrogance and paranoia, alienated his friends and infuriated his foes. In the last year alone, he lost two finance ministers, a foreign minister and Binyamin “Benny” Begin, the admired and worshiped leader of Likud and son of the former prime minister of Israel, Menachem Begin.

One of Netanyahu’s former finance ministers, Dan Meridor, a 20-year veteran of Likud, announced last week that he was quitting the party because of Netanyahu’s style and leadership, which “move in the direction of fragmentation and disunity . . . tears social norms to pieces, challenges the accepted rules of the game and crumples the bonds holding the society together. Our public life has become the hostage of cynicism, manipulation and totally incomprehensible conceit. Truth has vanished.” Meridor is compiling his own political list, which will cater to constituents right of center. But he may eventually join the centrist list due to be published this week by Shahak.

Begin is also on the verge of leaving the Likud to form another party, though the success of his venture is much doubted. He represents the desire to return to the era of clear-cut ideology, a nostalgia out of favor among Israelis because it rejects the idea of peace with the Palestinians in return for Israeli withdrawals from the occupied West Bank. True, Begin is noted for his personal integrity. At the same time, however, he is considered one of Israel’s most extreme voices opposing peace. Political pundits predict that a Begin candidacy will only split the right-wing vote and thereby improve the chances of the centrist (Meridor and Shahak) and left-of-center candidates (Barak).

Olmert, the Jerusalem mayor, and Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai, another victim of Netanyahu’s short temper, will probably remain in the Likud. But both are seriously considering challenging Netanyahu’s party leadership. “Something drastic must be done to save the Likud,” warns Olmert.

All the political maneuvering would seem to suggest that Netanyahu’s hubris and dirty tactics have finally caught up with him. Yet, it is much too early to write his political obituary. He still enjoys a certain popularity among a strange mix of antiestablishment forces--Netanyahu’s “new elites”--such as the Sephardi Jewish working class, ultrareligious communities and rabid nationalist elements who oppose peace with the Palestinians. His political rivals, on the other hand, most notably Meridor, Barak and Shahak, are part and parcel of the old elites that built and ruled Israel for five decades: Ashkenazi Jews who are well-educated, financially well-off and support the land-for-peace formula.

It is the peace process that is in jeopardy. A week ago, Israel was supposed to withdraw from another area of the West Bank and hand it over to Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority. But today the entire peace process, as reinvigorated at the summit with President Bill Clinton at Wye Plantation, is in doubt. “During an election, the peace process is on hold,” conceded an aide to Netanyahu.

But social and economic issues, not peace, are expected to drive the elections. Inflation under Netanyahu has soared to 10% annually. Unemployment is at 12%. Economic growth has shrunk to barely 1.5%. Yet, Palestinian extremists can always affect electoral outcomes. In 1996, an unstoppable wave of terrorist attacks by the fundamentalist group Hamas cost Shimon Peres the election. Israeli intelligence experts believe that Arafat has learned the lesson and will prevent Muslim fundamentalists from embarking on another bloody crusade. A failure on his part to do so may result in Netanyahu and his coalition of nationalists and orthodox defying the new Israeli trends.*