Shas Wins Coalition Exemption on Pullout Guidelines
Excerpts;
Interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s intentions to lead a government that would implement a further pullback from settlements and find a solution for civil marriages seemed a lot less plausible Sunday night. Kadima and Shas initialed a separate agreement detailing Shas’s objections to the coalition guidelines signed last week between Kadima and Labor.
The agreement enabled Shas to finalize its participation in the coalition.
A similar agreement might also pave the road toward Israel Beiteinu joining the government. Party leader Avigdor Lieberman said at a press conference that “the ball is in Kadima’s court,” though he had been planning to announce the cessation of negotiations and his party’s decision to go into opposition.
The final details of the agreement between Kadima and Shas were ironed out at a meeting between Olmert and Shas chairman Eli Yishai in the afternoon, following a marathon session on Saturday night between Yishai and Shas negotiator David Glass and Olmert’s adviser Ovad Yehezkel.
Shas’s main objections were to the clauses in the coalition guidelines that referred to “a reduction of the areas of Israeli settlement in Judea and Samaria” and that “the government will bring without delay legislation to solve the problem of those unable to get married.”
Olmert agreed that Yishai would sign a letter that would be attached to the coalition agreement underlining Shas’s objection to the settlements clause and the fact that the party will not be bound by it any way. Shas also received a major concession on civil marriage in a clause saying that any legislation would be brought “only with the agreement of all coalition partners.”
Yishai explained to reporters last night that the meaning was “there is going to be no law.”
Porat: Shas Won’t Be Able to Show its Face
Excerpts;
MK Chanan Porat, speaking yesterday on Arutz-7’s Hebrew newsmagazine:
“Shas chairman Eli Yishai told me [on Saturday night] that Shas would not enter a government whose guidelines include convergence or settlement reduction – or, in simple words, expulsion and uprooting… I would like to believe that he will stand by what he said. I saw Eli Yishai in Gush Katif during the days of the expulsion and he sat with us in the Sephardic synagogue in N’vei Dekalim together with his colleagues from Shas, and practically swore to us that he would not allow such a thing to happen again, if he could help it.”The coalition guidelines that will be presented to the Knesset this Thursday include the clauses “reduction of Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria,” but Shas has been permitted to add a letter of intent allowing it not to vote for such a plan.
“The problem is not whether he keeps his promise to me,” Porat said. “I think that Shas will not be able to show its face if it signs with its own hands and gives the stamp of approval to a government with such guidelines. This would be a slap in the face to the most basic loyalty to the Land of Israel.”
“In addition to the uprooting of Jewish communities, it would mean the uprooting of hundreds of synagogues, Talmudei Torah and schools. Who could show his face and be a partner – even if just at this early stage of signing an agreement – to such a crime?”
Olmert Backs Down; Shas Joins Coalition Without Promise to Support Withdrawal
Excerpts;
Olmert, who heads Kadima, told Shas Chairman Eli Yishai that Shas would be allowed to decide on the evacuation if and when the issue becomes an item on the government’s agenda. The caveat was included in a letter attached to the coalition agreement, which Shas signed after it was approved by the ultra-Orthodox Sephardic party’s Council of Torah Sages.
Yishai said that the letter commits his party to the government guidelines “in the framework of Olmert’s victory speech only,” which did not mention his “convergence plan” or the evacuation of settlements.
Notwithstanding the agreement on the settlements, Yishai said that his party’s biggest accomplishment was an increase in budgets to support the poor. For instance, Shas managed to cancel all the planned cuts in National Insurance Institute child allotments until 2009, coming to NIS 450 million. In addition, those who receive child allotments will get a one-time bonus this year, totaling NIS 650 million.
Shas’s persistence over the last few days also led Kadima to agree to grant about NIS 700 million to the ministerial socioeconomic committee, a panel on which Yishai will have a position. Some of that money will go toward the child allotments, while the rest will go toward nutrition programs, children at risk and other projects. Altogether, Shas received a total of about NIS 1.7 billion for weaker sectors of the population.
“We fought on behalf of the people of Israel, and we will continue to fight within the government,” said Yishai.
National Union-National Religious Party and United Torah Judaism criticized Shas’s decision to sign the coalition agreement, which marks that party’s return to power after three and a half years in the opposition.
“Shas’s entry into the government constitutes a de facto kashrut certificate for the uprooting of thousands of settlers and the burning and destruction of dozens of synagogues and Torah institutions in Gush Katif and, heaven forbid, dozens more in Judea and Samaria,” said MK Yitzhak Levy (National Union-NRP). “The settlers will not forget that Shas turned its back on them during this difficult time, when the sword is at its throat.”
Yishai will become industry and trade minister, though he will not get control over the Israel Lands Administration, as he had wanted. Three other Shas members will also become ministers, though only one of them will have a portfolio.
Shas did lose out on a few of its demands, however. Though it received an exemption from the evacuation clause of the government guidelines, Kadima did not agree to remove the clause from the guidelines altogether, as Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef had demanded. Despite his opposition to unilateral withdrawal and the evacuation of settlements, Yosef agreed to accept Olmert’s victory speech as the basis for the government guidelines.
Commentary;
Can Olmert, Kadima be depended upon to keep to the letter of the agreement made with Shas, or will the Barak Court find the agreement unlawful? The track record of these characters is not good. And there is no doubt that when Olmert agreed to these “concessions”, he did so knowing that he had a way to weasel out or around it anyway.
The question is, agreements or “coalition dscipline” notwithstanding, how can Shas, a party in priciple claiming to follow p’sak of a Gadol, abandon the principles of the Gadol and sit with the devils of Geirush? It is the same question to be asked of Gimmel? And how does it look; giving a label of Shas Kashrut to future expulsions of fellow Jews?MB