Crises befell both Ariel Sharon and Yasser Arafat this week. Both may survive, though not for long, predicts Graham Usher from Jerusalem At Al-Ahram Weekly press time it was still not clear whether Ariel Sharon's National Unity government would survive the gravest threat yet to its 19-month tenure. It was clear, though, that Yasser Arafat had faced down the gravest challenge to his authority since he was elected Palestinian Authority president in 1996. But in the perception of the two peoples they lead both governments are now hanging by the slenderest of threads. If they don't fall today or tomorrow, they will fall soon, either by elections, in Israel's case, or by irrelevance, in the Palestinian. Israel's most serious governmental crisis in three years is a wholly artificial one, driven less by the real issues raised by the Palestinian Intifada than by the party political considerations of its two main protagonists: Sharon and Labour Party leader and Defence Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer. It was brought to a head last Sunday when Ben- Eliezer vowed that Labour would vote against the first reading of this year's state budget unless $147 million was cut from the settlements and transferred to Israel's "weaker strata", especially pensioners, students and poor development towns. Jittery over his economy's international credit rating, Sharon had made a vote for the budget an oath of loyalty to his government. Ministers and parties who flouted it would either have to resign or be dismissed, he warned. The critical vote was supposed to have happened at noon on Wednesday but was dramatically delayed until late afternoon amid reports that Sharon and Ben- Eliezer would meet to discuss a "compromise". Sharon has indicated he is prepared to address Labour's objections once the first reading is passed. Ben- Eliezer wants the changes made to the budget now. If no compromise is reached Sharon has the option of forming a "narrow" based government heavily dependent on extreme right parties or calling early elections to be held within 90 days. Israeli analysts believe Sharon will attempt the first but is resigned to the second. Why has Ben-Eliezer threatened to bolt the coalition? Most Israeli analysts believe his belated concern for Israel's poor is about as sincere as his intention to dismantle the 100 or so settlement "outposts" that have mushroomed in the West Bank during his watch as Defence Minister. The true motive is survival. Due to its abject performance in the National Unity government, polls show Labour losing six of its present 25 seats in parliamentary elections. They also show Ben-Eliezer losing the leadership of his party to either Haim Ramon or Avraham Metzna in Labour's primaries next month. Faced with the end of his political life Ben-Eliezer is thus trying to burnish his "leftist" credentials by presenting himself as a defender of the poor and opponent of the settlers, particularly the messianic breed that people the outposts. By the same token Sharon cannot be seen to be standing against the settlements. This is not simply out of ideological conviction. He is keenly aware that Likud is now a party deeply penetrated by settler constituencies who will ditch him in favour of Benyamin Netanyahu should he even nibble at their state subsidies. Yasser Arafat's "victory" may turn out to be as Pyrrhic as Ben-Eliezer's. On Tuesday the Palestinian Legislative Council finally approved the "new" Palestinian cabinet by 56 votes to 18. Many of the Fatah deputies who led the revolt against the "old" cabinet in September simply sat on their hands. They were cowed into doing so under inordinate pressure from Arafat and Fatah loyalists, old and young, warning that a revolt against this cabinet would be construed internationally as support for Israeli and US designs to unseat their leader. Fatah's parliamentarians voted accordingly, since their protest was never about replacing Arafat's overall leadership; it was about curbing his authoritarian methods of rule. The cabinet changes are only happening "because they were imposed on Arafat by Israel, the US and the regional Arab states," said Hussam Khader, a Fatah deputy from Nablus, who refused to even attend the PLC session in Ramallah. "There is no genuine intention to rebuild national institutions on a democratic or even nationalist basis." Few Palestinians are likely to disagree with that sentiment. And fewer still believe the current government crisis in Israel has anything to do with settlement construction in the occupied territories.
