Israel
SINCE the Israelis love paradoxes, they must have been well satisfied with their elections last November. The campaign was full of sound and fury, but it produced hardly any change. The sixth Parliament, or Knesset, since the state of Israel was created in 1948 reassembled with virtually all the old faces in their old places and confronted with the same problems as before.
The principal new element in the election campaign was the split in the middle-of-the-road social-democratic Mapai (Israel Labor Party), which had taken the leading part in each government formed since Israel gained statehood. Israel’s single great contemporary “prophet” and statesman, David Ben-Gurion, was ousted from Mapai — which he, mainly, had been instrumental in founding — and formed a new party, Rafi (Israel Workers Party), with the help of the former Mapai Ministers of Defense and Agriculture, Shimon Peres and Moshe Dayan. Like an old elephant which has been forcibly separated from the herd, Ben-Gurion trumpeted his fury far and wide. A bitterness unusual even for Israel’s acrid politics entered the election campaign.
It was certainly not all on one side. Levi Eshkol, also of Mapai and the leader of the outgoing government coalition, responded in kind. Mapai concentrated its fire on the schismatics of Rafi, proclaiming Ben-Gurion to be politically senile and Dayan to be an overambitious opportunist who was prepared to make damagingly generous gestures to Israel’s quarter-millionstrong Arab minority. Political observers predicted a revulsion on the part of the electorate from both Mapai and Rafi.
In the event, nothing of the kind happened. Mapai, joined by another socialist party, Ahdut Avoda (Unity of Labor), in the so-called “Alignment for the Unity of Israel’s Workers,” polled just under 37 percent of the votes and took 45 seats in the Knesset. This was 4 percent and 5 seats less than the two parties obtained in 1961. Rafi polled 8 percent of the votes and obtained 10 seats in the Knesset, which was less than expected and which suggested that the politically diverse but instinctively careful Israelis did not intend to entrust themselves to a once great leader who is now in his eightieth year. The strengths of the other parties remained very much the same as before. The Israeli voter had again shown his aversion to change. More significantly, he had shown no increased confidence in the two parties of the right, which had formed the conservative-liberal bloc and which alone could have offered an alternative to Mapai leadership.
Galloping prices and wages
Just under one and a quarter million Israelis voted on November 2, but more than a quarter of a million stayed away from the polls. Perhaps those who stayed home did so because the contending parties never came to grips with the most important current issue, that of internal inflation, exemplified by galloping prices and wages. The coalition government will have to deal toughly and promptly with this problem. Inflation will make it more difficult for Israel to build up its exports, and its chronically adverse balance of trade is the disturbing result of learning to live a little too well a little too soon. In 1965 the deficit was expected to amount to around $400 million — $50 million less than in 1964, but the second largest in Israel’s history.
Internal inflation is more striking than the trade deficit. Nominal wages are believed to have risen by a sensational 16 percent in 1965 (the average for each of the previous three years was 11 percent, and that was considered unduly high). The cost-of-living index jumped by 8.5 percent in the first nine months of the year. Money in circulation rose by around 13 percent. Personal consumption was up by somewhat more than this, although it would be unfair to accuse the Israelis of indulging in a spending spree. On the contrary, up to the last three years they have been living almost excessively modestly, although never quite within their means.
Certain factors continue to operate against them. They have few raw materials other than Dead Sea minerals and citrus fruits. The hostility of their Arab neighbors has imposed a disproportionately large defense budget on them, along with the major nuisance of the Arab blockade. Israel is a long way from its main markets in Europe and America, and they are highly competitive ones. Israel must, too, absorb large numbers of immigrants from North African and Middle Eastern countries who have no skills, arrive virtually penniless, and must, initially, be heavily subsidized in order to take their place in a modern state.
The last Eshkol government knew all about these factors, and did far too little to check inflation. The impending election was the main reason for its lack of action. The Eshkol government has, in fact, produced slightly better trade figures for 1965, by running down stacks of raw materials, limiting credit for capital investment, and reducing capital purchases, such as ships and heavy machinery. In addition, 1965 produced enough rain and a good citrus crop.
The major sin of omission of the last Eshkol government was in the held of labor relations. Dependent on the support of the left-wing elements of the coalition, the government acted as an impotent onlooker to a series of leapfrogging wage demands and wildcat strikes, largely staged by white-collar workers and government and municipal employees. The strike of workers in the milk-marketing cooperative resulted in milk having to be rationed throughout half of Israel. There were strikes of dentists, doctors, and hospital staffs — one of which threatened to paralyze the hospitals in Jerusalem. At the end of November, occupational therapists threatened action if their demands were not met.
When both postmen and garbage collectors went on strike, a Trade Union (Histadrut) official remarked: “The economy is being subjected to uninhibited pressure by all sorts of groups of wage-earners in order to obtain their demands. These groups are almost entirely in the public services. As a result, categories of industrial workers have been left behind in the race for personal gain. There is the threat of a spreading state of indiscipline, which can seriously damage the economy.”
What will the new Israeli government do? Eshkol’s last Minister of Finance, Pinhas Sapir, was believed at the time of the election to be in favor of a wage freeze. But the leftwing parties cannot support such ultimate austerity. Nor can the Histadrut, which would do no more than sponsor a sharp slowdown in wage increases for most wage earners while allowing carefully pruned increases for categories of industrial workers which have lagged behind.
Whether wildcat strikes can be outlawed or otherwise suppressed seems doubtful in a state of overfull employment, with thousands of jobs vacant. Some observers believe that any sort of wage slowdown is unattainable, and that government will instead give a twist to the tax screw.
Mundane economic problems at the moment totally obscure national issues, which, admittedly, do not change much. For instance, the fall brought fresh incursions of Arab el-Fatch raiders over the frontier into Israeli territory. The Israelis allow a raid of these Syrian-trained bands, largely composed of asocial elements, to be repeated once, even twice, from the territory of one or other of their Arab neighbors. Then they strike back. One such counteraction took place, just before the election, against a Lebanese hamlet. In the outside world the reaction was that reprisals against the Lebanon, surely the most innocuous Arab state, might be unjustified. But Israel had conveyed a prior warning, and the Lebanon had taken no action to discourage or disarm the Syrian-based intruders.
Nasser’s threat
The threat posed by President Nasser of Egypt remains. Some alarm was caused in November in Israel by the report that France had agreed to sell Mirage III-C planes to Egypt, for France has been Israel’s principal supplier of military equipment. On November 25 Nasser painted a gloomy picture of Egypt’s economy but claimed that the Arab military front against Israel is more united than ever before. It is a permanent Israeli worry that Nasser may spearhead an Arab “crusade” to try to drive the Israelis into the Mediterranean,
Nasser has proclaimed this ambition often. According to the most recent estimates, Egypt now has 1200 tanks against Israel’s 600, 500 planes to 450, and more than 100 middle-range rockets, which would be especially lethal if successfully launched against Israel’s heavily populated coastal belt. This is why Israel must remain highly alert. Army maneuvers, which took place in late November and early December, have been highly comprehensive and have involved the swiftest possible movement of armored forces.
The American presence
The Israeli connection with the United States remains firmly based on mutual understanding. The special connection between the five and a half million Jews in the United States and the two and a half million people in Israel is being continuously renewed — most of all by the massive United States contribution to the Israeli tourist trade, but also by close commercial connections and by the common denominator of functioning democracy.
The United States is Israel’s biggest supplier of imports (roughly $220 million in 1965) and takes $65 million of Israeli exports. Direct United States investment in Israel is substantial, and there are around 450 “know-how” agreements between Israel and United States firms. Apart from all this, the United States has a vast, indefinable sentimental interest in Israel. Washington was the first to recognize the new state in 1948, and Israelis believe that it is the United States which offers the best possibilities of interchange of thought, commerce, or even population.
A surprisingly small United States Embassy in Tel Aviv maintains a lively contact with Israeli governmental and outside opinion. The United States ambassador is regarded, on the one hand, as a man who lacks the drive and vitality of the Israelis themselves, but on the other hand, as a friend of Israel with a thoroughly sound understanding of Israeli problems. It is relevant that Israelis expect their friends to be objective and are happiest if they know that foreign diplomats are just that.
Israel’s complaints
While American-Israeli relations are generally good, there are at present three sources of Israeli complaint against the United States. One is minor. It is that the State Department has taken an unobjective altitude toward raids and counterraids across the Israeli frontier.
The United States government was, the Israelis think, too ready to condemn the Israeli counterraid on the Lebanese village of Houla, while not condemning at least thirty acts of sabotage which Arab terrorists have perpetrated in Israeli territory in recent months.
More important is the Israeli belief that the United States should be readier to supply arms to Israel. This belief has been strengthened by the evident French desire to secure better relations with the Arab world. Since France has been Israel’s main source of arms, the question is being asked whether French arms may not in the future go equally to Israel and the Arab bloc. If this happens, Israel will expect a revision of the United States attitude.
Finally, a great many Israelis would like to have a United States guarantee of existing Middle East frontiers. This wish is not often spoken, but Israelis harp on the fact that the United States is the only “policeman of the West" now that the British Commonwealth has relinquished this function and can produce no more than fire brigades in its own territorial domain. All this should not suggest that Israel wants to lean increasingly on outside help. Generally speaking, confidence in its own ability to solve present problems and maintain an effective defense remains unshaken. Israel is moving out of a pioneering phase; but it remains vigorous and viable, and utterly determined to survive.