Israel The Government Takes a Fall

By JON D. HULL JERUSALEM

His rivals consider Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir a wily political escape artist. By exhausting opponents with delaying tactics and evading crucial decisions, the Likud party leader has managed to stick to his hard-line ideology while feigning compromise, burying in procedural minutiae every proposal for Arab-Israeli peace that has come his way.

Last week the master of delay found himself cornered, however. Forced to choose between accepting U.S. Secretary of State James Baker's compromise plan for Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in Cairo and risking the collapse of his national unity government, Shamir stuck to his ideology. After a dramatic showdown on the floor of the Knesset, he became the first Israeli leader ever to be evicted from office when Labor Party leader Shimon Peres pushed through a vote of no confidence by a margin of 60 to 55.

The collapse of the national unity government was appropriately ignominious. Ever since its formation 15 months ago, the coalition of Likud and Labor has functioned as something of a joke, breeding acrimony and indecision. Its foreign policy has been contradictory. Peres proposed swapping land for peace; Shamir insisted on both peace and territory. Says Dore Gold of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv: "Imagine Richard Nixon and George McGovern in the same Cabinet trying to negotiate the Paris peace talks ((with Viet Nam))."

Ironically, Shamir's fall was prompted by his own peace initiative, which he launched last spring under heavy pressure to negotiate an end to the intifadeh. The plan called for elections among the 1.7 million Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza to choose representatives who would then negotiate a period | of limited autonomy with Israel. To get the elections off the ground, Baker proposed a formula under which Egypt, Israel and the U.S. would select Palestinian delegates for preliminary talks.

Likud consistently stalled negotiations over the identity of the Palestinian interlocutors it would find acceptable, rejecting anyone even remotely connected with the P.L.O. To lure the Palestinians to the table, Baker demanded that Israel agree to accept at least one Palestinian deported from the territories as well as a resident of the West Bank with an office or second home in East Jerusalem. These finely honed definitions were acceptable to Labor, but Likud hard-liners turned them down as an attempt to maneuver Israel into direct talks with the P.L.O.

In a last-ditch effort to budge Shamir, Washington embarked on a high- profile game, threatening Jerusalem with both diplomatic and financial pressure. When President Bush condemned the settling of Jews in Israeli- annexed East Jerusalem -- a long-standing if rarely stated U.S. policy -- Shamir pounced. "Voices in Washington have outraged every Jew," he said. "We have no obligation to blindly follow every move the U.S. makes." The Bush Administration resented Shamir's efforts to shift the blame for his downfall. "This business that the President is precipitating this is nonsense," said a senior official in Washington.

In the end, Shamir's campaign backfired, and the eight-hour Knesset debate reflected the deep divisions within the Israeli electorate. Peres accused Shamir of "murdering the peace process" and asked, "Who will believe you again in this country? You have broken every promise." Shamir lambasted Peres for "shameful" appeasement of the Arabs, retorting, "We are not afraid of peace, we are afraid of irresponsible concessions."

When the votes were tallied, Shamir sank his head into his hands, perhaps to blot out the triumphant smile on Peres' face. President Chaim Herzog is now expected to give Peres the first shot at forming a new coalition, a process that could take weeks -- and that typically brings out the worst in Israeli politics. Since Labor has only 39 seats in the Knesset, against Likud's 40, Peres must bargain for the support of the smaller parties, ranging from Arab communists to Orthodox rabbis. The balance of power is held by the fickle religious parties, which control 18 seats and see nothing wrong with bartering their support for more money for yeshivas and military deferments for religious students. |

If Peres succeeds, his government is expected to give a short-term boost to the peace process by swiftly approving Baker's plan. But when it comes time to deal, his narrow coalition is likely to face intense opposition from a newly unified right-wing. Should Peres fail to form a government, Shamir will try to cobble together his own majority. If he succeeds, the path to peace will be thoroughly mined by a Cabinet laden with extremists. Should both leaders be unsuccessful and Israelis have to return to the polls, another parliamentary deadlock is expected. The fourth option, which has already been suggested by former Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin, a Laborite, may prove the least desirable: the formation of yet another government of national unity.