Before the Fall

Begin's support is fading

"There is a negative dynamic affecting the government. You can maneuver here and there, but in a democracy, when you lose the confidence of a majority of the people, eventually you have to call elections."

So said one close associate of Prime Minister Menachem Begin last week, implicitly conceding what most Israelis now expect: Begin's shaky coalition government will probably not survive until the next scheduled elections in October 1981. Indeed, there is a remote chance that the end could come as early as this week. The Knesset is scheduled to debate a motion, supported by the opposition Labor Party, to dissolve itself and hold new elections within four months.

Begin has overcome similar motions in the past, but last week his coalition suffered the unexpected defections of two members from the small party called the Democratic Movement. That left the Prime Minister with a majority of only three seats in the 120-member Knesset. Two of those votes belong to his former Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan and his recently resigned Defense Minister Ezer Weizman. Both men might well vote for early elections. In a speech to Haifa University graduates last week, Dayan declared, "The time has come for us to send the ball back into the people's court and have them decide whom they want as their leaders."

Begin's government has been sharply criticized abroad for its hard line in the Egyptian-Israeli negotiations on Palestinian autonomy. Especially irksome is the government's determination to keep on building Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. Trouble continued last week in the West Bank (where the population is 98% Palestinian) with a series of ugly incidents between Arab students and Israeli soldiers and police. But the chief cause of the government's rapidly declining popularity at home is the parlous state of the Israeli economy, which suffers from triple-digit inflation, high taxes, scarce and expensive housing, and unemployment. Following up on a previous decision to slash $140 million from the defense budget, the five-member economic Cabinet headed by Finance Minister Yigael Hurvitz last week recommended overall budget cuts of an additional $108 million. Indeed, Hurvitz is so worried about the state of the economy that he may resign from the government.

The more beleaguered he feels, the more imperiously Menachem Begin behaves. In trumpeting his accomplishments, he implied that the election of a Labor government would be tantamount to handing over the West Bank to the Palestine Liberation Organization. He complained of a "putsch atmosphere" created by civilian protesters against his government's policies. After Arab students at Israeli universities began wearing T shirts proclaiming their support of the P.L.O., Begin threatened to expel them. The students, as it happens, are Israeli citizens who enjoy the constitutional guarantees of free speech.

Perhaps Begin's most provocative gesture was to reaffirm his previously stated intention to move the Prime Minister's office to East Jerusalem, which the Israelis annexed after occupying it during the Six-Day War of 1967. No nation in the world has recognized Israeli sovereignty over East Jerusalem; the U.S. has long held that the future status of the Holy City must be negotiated as part of an overall Middle East peace treaty.*

The U.N. Security Council last week began debate on a Pakistan-sponsored resolution condemning Israeli efforts to annex East Jerusalem. Meanwhile, Begin assured U.S. Ambassador to Israel Samuel Lewis that the controversial transfer of his office to East Jerusalem was not imminent, although it would probably take place in the near future. Having committed himself to the move, Begin felt he could not reverse himself without losing face. That argument is flawed. Moving the Prime Minister's office to the predominantly Arab sector of Jerusalem could result only in the further, unnecessary isolation of Israel from its dwindling band of supporters.

* Of the 39 foreign embassies in Israel, 26 are in Tel Aviv and only 13 (representing The Netherlands and twelve Latin American countries) are in Jerusalem.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.