Israel Matzav

Olmert limits entrance to his coalition

Ehud Olmert is trying to form a left-leaning coalition tonight - before the elections - and the united right wing front against giving land to the 'Palestinians' may be cracking tonight as the Ashkenazi Haredi United Torah Judaism party is saying that they may be willing to go into a coalition with Olmert despite the pre-conditions he has announced. I don't know about the rest of you Israelis, but I am still 'undecided' about whom to vote for with four parties in the running....

Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert severely curtailed his chances of forming a new coalition on Wednesday, when he told Channel 10 that parties would have to accept his West Bank convergence plan to be included in a Kadima-led coalition.

The plan, which he revealed in an interview with The Jerusalem Post two weeks ago, calls for removing isolated West Bank settlements and converging them into settlement blocs.

"Whoever is not ready to be a part of our convergence plan, of our new diplomatic agenda, cannot be part of the coalition," Olmert said. "There will be no rebels. I will not permit a coalition system with rebels that ruin it from the inside."

The only parties which would agree to adopt Olmert's plan are Labor, Meretz and the Arab parties. Other prospective coalition partners, like Israel Beiteinu, Shas and United Torah Judaism, would have a tough time accepting such a condition. [Maybe.... See below.... CiJ]

Following the interview, Likud MK Gideon Sa'ar, who heads the party's public relations team, called upon the three parties not to join an Olmert-led government.

"It is forbidden to allow these parties to take votes from the Right and create a left-wing government," Sa'ar said.

Israel Beiteinu head Avigdor Lieberman dismissed Olmert's remarks, calling them the kind of statements that one made prior to the elections.Afterward, he said, Olmert would be more amenable to negotiations when faced with the reality of forming a coalition.

...

NU-NRP leader Benny Elon told The Jerusalem Post he could not support Olmert's plan. But he warned that both Shas and Israel Beiteinu would agree to it at the end of the day, if voters failed to support a right- wing bloc.

If such a right-wing bloc could be formed, he said, he believed that Israel Beiteinu and Shas would be a part of it. Otherwise, he said, they will make a deal with Kadima.

Shas chairman Eli Yishai said his party prefers no additional disengagements. He added that Olmert's
declarations are characteristic of the campaign season, but Shas is waiting to see what the people
want as reflected in the election results. After the election, Shas will decide what to do.

Yishai has previously said that Shas supports territorial compromise within the framework of a peace agreement with the Palestinians and called belief in Greater Israel anachronistic.

United Torah Judaism spokesman Menahem Geshayed said that every decision is made by the party's Council of Torah Sages. "Whatever they tell us to do, we will do," he said.

My reaction to this: Olmert is grandstanding, but I wouldn't want to be in a coalition with him anyway. Yisrael Beiteinu is a right wing party and cannot go into a coalition with Olmert's parameters if they want to continue to exist. On the other hand, Olmert is a stubborn mule and will not accept anyone else's plan. Shas would like to go into a coalition like this, but cannot do so without losing much of their voting base, which is very right wing. NRP-NU is trying to scare all the rest of the right wing parties into voting for them. And UTJ.... in this article and even more so in the next one, you're hearing the Litvish side and not the Chassidishe side of UTJ. While everyone is supposed to dutifully go and put their Gimmel slips into the box, I think UTJ realizes that they will be pounded in the next election if they go into a coalition like this - most of their voters are very right wing as well. And the ballots are still secret....

Arutz Sheva reports on a radio interview this morning in which Haredi MK Avraham Ravitz hinted that UTJ would join a Kadima-led government despite Olmert's statements:

MK Avraham Ravitz (United Torah Judaism) told Israel Radio this morning that he does not rule out joining a government led by Ehud Olmert and Kadima. This, in the face of Olmert's declaration of last night that only parties that accept his plan for further disengagements will be invited to join the government he hopes to form.

Despite the interviewer's harping on whether Ravitz would agree to unilateral withdrawals, Ravitz insisted in turning the discussion to the bilateral nature of the coalition agreement his party might sign.

Anchor Aryeh Golan asked, "Are you in fact willing to agree in advance to Olmert's plan of 'turning inward' to settlement blocs in order to join his coalition if he wins?"

Ravitz began by saying that the decision will be made by the Council of Torah Sages, and then added, "In order not to leave you without an answer, I can tell you with certainty that signed agreements must be kept, and if we sign a coalition agreement with someone, we will keep it and we'll demand that the other side do so as well..."

Golan: "Yes, but you are still in the government, even after all the opponents of the disengagement left it a long time ago, so does this mean that you will agree to further unilateral withdrawals?" [UTJ actually joined the coalition AFTER all the votes on the expulsion had been taken. They did it because they were desparate for funding because the previous coalition - which included Shinui and the NRP - cut their funding to almost zero. So all their institutions were broke. Sometimes I wish our political parties would think long term instead of what I can get NOW. CiJ]

Ravitz: (slowly) "No, it doesn't mean that; it means that we stayed in the government despite all that happened - which means something - but you are talking to me about a program of which no one knows the details."

Golan: "It [the program to withdraw unilaterally from large areas of Judea and Samaria] has been publicized very clearly..."

Ravitz said that only the principles thereof have been publicized, and "the question that we have to weigh is what is the price of living here in the Land of Israel. We have to see the details. All the large plans depend on their little details, and we will have to weigh them."

Golan: "I understand between the lines that--"

Ravitz: "All the other parties, except for Marzel, are willing to compromise a little -"

Golan: "Yes, but not unilaterally, and not on such a great amount of Judea and Samaria."

Ravitz: "Certainly not unilaterally; an agreement is bilateral, and whoever signs has to agree to keep to it; I'm against signing and then backing out, I'm against that."

Golan: "OK, but I'm talking about agreements with the Palestinians, not the coalition agreement..."

Ravitz: "I'm saying that if we sign a coalition agreement, I can promise you that we will keep it.

Golan: "Yes, that's for sure."

Though Ravitz is open to joining Olmert's coalition, his party colleague Yaakov Litzman makes such a move conditional upon the willingness of Shas to do the same [because otherwise all the Haredi voters will get angry at UTJ and will run to Shas. I'm not impressed. CiJ]. "I will do everything in my power to make sure that we join the coalition only together with Shas," Litzman told Arutz-7 today. "But this is only my opinion, and I do not represent Degel HaTorah." Litzman belongs to the Agudat Yisrael faction of UTJ, while Ravitz is of Degel HaTorah.

Litzman said that this does not mean that if he joins the government, he will vote for withdrawals. "When we joined last time," he said, "we voted against it in every disengagement vote." [There were no disengagement votes after they joined. That was why they were willing to join. CiJ]

A-7: "Yes, but is it not so that your joining of the government allowed those votes to take place in the first place? It is claimed that If you hadn't joined, the government would likely have fallen."

Litzman said this is not true, and that he joined the government at the time, by order of the party rabbis, in order to make sure that Shinui "would not return to the government and continue to destroy religious services in Israel," and that there was "a majority for the disengagement even without us."

After UTJ decided to join the coalition last year, MK Ravitz acknowledged to Arutz-7 that the party's decision to do so had caused some tensions: "...as it is, we have already lost many votes. The Yesha [Judea and Samaria] residents expected us to vote against the government... The next elections won't be easy..."

A senior source in the Moving Rightward campaign - which is coordinating thousands of phone calls and house-to-house visits to potential Kadima voters in an attempt to persuade them to vote for any right-wing party instead - says that UTJ is far from his first choice. "I don't know if we can really count on UTJ," he said. "The main hope is that if we get 61 MKs in the right-wing and religious bloc, it is almost certain that a nationalist government can be formed. But if Olmert forms the government, then I can't be sure what UTJ or Yisrael Beiteinu will do. [In the last election, UTJ was campaigning in Yesha and not just in Kiryat Sefer and Beitar. That is no longer the case. CiJ]

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:17 AM