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Secular Shinui holds key to coalition
Israel's Shinui party, a secular, centrist grouping, has emerged as perhaps the single biggest winner in Tuesday's general election. From just six seats in the outgoing Knesset, or parliament, the party is predicted to have taken between 15 and 17. It will be difficult for Ariel Sharon - who looks certain to remain as prime minister - to form a stable coalition government without them. But the aggressively secular party has vowed not to join a coalition that also includes religious parties - and it looks unlikely that a government could be built without them, either. The apparently inflexible positions of Mr Lapid and Mr Mitzna may make it very difficult for Mr Sharon to build a coalition despite his apparently sweeping victory at the polls.
Hmmm... Rock... Hard place...
In a speech shortly after exit poll results were announced on Tuesday night, party leader Yosef "Tommy" Lapid called on Mr Sharon to form a secular government of Likud, Shinui and the centre-left Labour party. Minutes later, Labour party leader Amram Mitzna said he would not join such a government and urged Mr Lapid to refuse to do so as well.
Ewww! These grapes are really sour. Labour, of course, got tromped...
Mr Lapid, the man of the hour, is 71, a Holocaust survivor and former talk-show host. His party's key policies centre on:
  • reducing the influence of the Jewish religious right in Israeli society;
  • cutting welfare payments to ultra-Orthodox Jewish families;
  • removing the exemption that means religious young men do not have to join the army while their secular countrymen are drafted and obliged to serve in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Mr Lapid is characteristically direct about his attitude towards the Orthodox community. "I don't mind them carrying on their religion but I do mind when they try to impose their views on the secular majority in this country," he says. "I think Israel should be a modern, Western civilisation and not a medieval ghetto."
It's likely Labour will torpedo a deal, which is going to leave things hung. That's a bad thing for Israel. It also puts Tommy in the position of being the one who has to compromise if he wants to be in the government. I think the goverment will be the better for a change from Labour.

I don't know much about Shinui — in addition to being secular, they could also be pacifists, for all I do know. But they're what I thought of when I read on somebody's blog — sorry, I forgot which one — that when people say they don't agree with something Israel does they're really, deep down, being anti-Semitic. I don't think the religious parties should have as much influence in Israel as they do, much less more. That's the sort of thing we point the finger at in the Islamist states, so why should it be a good thing in Israel? So when Tommy says "I think Israel should be a modern, Western civilisation and not a medieval ghetto," I agree with him.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt 2003-01-28
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=9673