JERUSALEM — Ehud Barak may have scored a stunning landslide win in Israel’s elections this week, but that’s nothing compared to what he faces next.
Within 45 days, he must take a collection of 120 opinionated and ideologically divided politicians and somehow mold at least 61 of them into a stable coalition in the Knesset.
And that will be no easy task.
Indeed, Barak will have to master the art of deal-making to form a workable government among the 15 parties in the new Knesset. The 56 percent to 44 percent win he secured over Netanyahu may be the last thing Barak has to celebrate for a while.
In particular, Barak will have to contend with a much more powerful Shas Party, a fervently religious organization that draws predominant support from Israel’s Sephardim.
Of all parties, Shas scored the most dramatic victory in the elections for Knesset, boosting its representation from 10 seats to 17 seats. The gain makes it one of the “Big Three” in the Knesset alongside the much-reduced Likud and Labor factions.
With 100 percent of the vote tallied, Labor/One Israel had won only 26 seats, compared with Labor’s 34 in the outgoing Knesset. Likud had 19 seats, down from the 32 in outgoing Knesset.
Shas’ strident election campaign had focused almost exclusively on the four-year sentence for bribery and corruption recently imposed on its leader, Aryeh Deri.
Deri announced Tuesday he was resigning as a Knesset member and withdrawing from political life, leading some to believe his action would clear the way for coalition negotiations between Barak and Shas. However, Reuters reported Barak had ruled out any dealings with Shas as long as Deri remained the behind-the-scenes leader of the party.
“His decision to leave the Knesset is a correct one but the public and I cannot accept a fictitious situation in which Deri sits in a distant room…and conducts negotiations by remote control,” Reuters reported Barak as saying.
In any case, the Shas conundrum dramatically illustrates the daunting task facing Barak in his quest, as he proclaimed on election night, for “unity,” “brotherhood” and a “healing of the rifts” that have threatened to tear apart Israeli society.
One of Barak’s elections promises was “I will not bow to extremists.” On the morning after, however, all election promises must undergo searching re-examination under the harsh light of the new Knesset arithmetic.
In practical terms, Barak will find it hard to set up a stable government without either Shas or Likud.
On paper he can do it. But the patchwork of agreements with tiny factions that such a government would entail is a recipe for grief.
There seem to be several senior Laborites determined to ensure Barak has as wide a coalition as possible, which will also mean offering a host of ministerial positions to prospective parties.
In general, Barak can opt for one of two scenarios: a government that only just passes the 60-seat mark, which guarantees a good half of the ministries will be run by Labor/One Israel; or as wide a government as possible, which theoretically would keep him in power for the maxium four years but would place most ministries in to the hands of “outsiders.”
Knesset results give Barak several possible allies to choose from in the 45 days he now has to form that government:
*The Meretz Party will have 10 seats, up from nine in the outgoing Knesset.
*Yisrael Ba’Aliyah, the Russian emigre party, won six seats, down from seven in the outgoing Knesset.
*Shinui, a new party that says all fervently religious parties should be kept out of the next government, will have six seats in the new Knesset.
*The Center Party, the new grouping headed by Yitzhak Mordechai, who dropped out of the race for prime minister a day before elections, will have six seats.
*The National Religious Party will have five seats, compared to nine in the outgoing Knesset.
If the NRP agrees to enter an otherwise secularist and left-of-center coalition, this would give Barak something of the unifying “rainbow effect” that he has pledged to strive for.
Nevertheless, his larger goal of reconciliation would seem to dictate a pact with Shas or Likud — and most observers believe he will try to include one of them in his coalition.
Each, however, holds out major problems for Barak.
Meretz, a natural Barak ally, has issued a firm declaration that it would refuse to join any government with Shas. In doing so, Meretz is following the lead of the Shinui Party.
Barak needs one or both of those factions inside his tent. But how can he get them there and have Shas inside, too?
Indeed, within Barak’s own party there is a strong body of opinion opposing a deal with Shas.
During his victory address at Rabin Square on Monday night, Barak was confronted with placards demanding “Not the haredim,” or fervently religious. The huge throng picked up that slogan and shouted it at Barak and his leadership team.
Ironically, it was Netanyahu’s close alliance with Shas that helped bring on his crushing defeat.
As the election campaign neared its climax — and especially after Deri’s sentencing in April and Shas’ vociferous rejection of the ruling — it became increasingly clear that Netanyahu’s coalition was splitting at the seams.
The vast immigrant community from the former Soviet Union bridled at finding themselves lumped together in Netanyahu’s governing coalition with a convicted felon whose followers were threatening the judges who had found him guilty.
Yisrael Ba’Aliyah, the immigrants rights party led by Natan Sharansky, brilliantly turned that sentiment to its electoral advantage by running a catchy campaign directed against Shas’ control of the Interior Ministry.
In the month before polling day, tens of thousands and probably hundreds of thousands of immigrants shifted their support from Netanyahu — seen in the thrall of Shas — to Barak.
The Likud, smarting from its defeat, will now undego a grueling leadership battle. Netanyahu, who will serve as premier during the time it takes Barak to form a new coalition, swiftly resigned the party leadership after his defeat. Ariel Sharon, the current foreign minister, became Likud’s temporary leader.
The political persuasion of the new leader may prove a determining factor in whether Likud is prepared to make the doctrinal compromises necessary for a partnership with Labor.
For their part, Barak and his team are not prepared for a national unity government that is in effect a government of paralysis, which was the case for the governments that ruled from 1984 to 1990.
His resounding victory in the vote for prime minister gives him the perfect right to insist that any coalition must follow One Israel’s lead.