A Tragic Comic Performance
During World War I a correspondence developed in the London "Times" as to whether Christianity had failed. Israel Zangwill intervening, as a Jew, with some diffidence in the discussion of such a topic suggested that Christianity had not failed; it had just not been tried. In Israel today it may he said with absolute certainty: the Likud policy has not failed; no serious attempt has been made to implement it.
The tragicomic events before and during the cabinet meeting on July 17 illuminated, as in caricature, two of the reasons why it had not been tried. One is the failure of the civic courage needed to implement painful decisions. The other is the failure of the prime minister to give more than cursory attention to the problems facing the government (and the people) or to study the implications and probable consequences of decisions taken. This failure has affected much of the work of the government as a whole.
The implementation of the policy propounded by the Likud before the 1977 elections required primarily the quality of courage and careful, skilful planning. The Likud took office when the accumulated blunders of years and the perpetuation of ingrown evils had reduced the country to a state of economic incoherence, with overtones of social and moral degeneration. The overriding influence, for example, of successful strikes by specialized pressure groups, aided by government spinelessness and Histadrut opportunism, was making a mockery of any rational labour-relations policy. The system of "linkage" (between one group of workers and another) turned every tremor in the labour market into a major earthquake.
The standard of living was rising, but productivity was lagging, The people were not working hard enough, and were living beyond their means. Economic independence was receding, and the degree of dependence on the US was constantly growing. Immigration was diminishing, emigration rising.
The Likud (and the Democratic Movement for Change) promised to remedy these ills. Obviously there were areas in which the remedies could not but be painful. Their application required throughout intelligent planning and skilful execution. All the measures offered by the Likud required readjustment not always to the immediate taste of the people or the groups involved. Workers usually do not like to be told they are not working hard enough; managers resent the suggestion that their inefficiency is largely responsible for the poor productivity of their work force; industrialists making a comfortable profit do not always rush to invest in expensive up to date machinery.
In order to achieve the high productivity essential to economic independence, they would all have to adjust. Similarly, workers in the services and young people starting their careers would have to be coaxed into industry.
Perhaps the most difficult plank in the Likud platform was the institution of national arbitration in essential services aimed at eliminating the disruption of one sector of the economy after another, and indeed the disruption of the life of the state (in schools, in hospitals, in the post office). Here undoubtedly a battle royal could be expected with the leaders of the Histadrut who, having no alternative cure to offer, justify their vehement opposition to arbitration by allegedly Socialist doctrine.
The task was undoubtedly formidable. It was clear therefore that the day after taking office the prime minister would establish within the government the planning machinery needed for the wide ranging changes he had promised. Equally obvious was the immediate need for an information authority which would infuse the public with a sense of emergency, and a sense of the contribution it could make in the healing of the national malaise. An honest, sophisticated programme would have begun to restore the sense of idealism which had been so eroded in the years of Alignment rule. Of critical importance was the need for public understanding that the Likud programme, and the changes and readjustments it involved, would bring about a lessening of the dependence on the US, a dependence which threatened not only Israel's security but also the moral fibre of its society.
It is beyond doubt that the people of Israel were ready to cooperate in consummating the far reaching policies of the Likud. By their vote they had shown they realized that the national health required that, for a while at least, life for most of them would be not easier but more difficult. The new government was not thereby assured of an easy passage for its more painful measures, but it enjoyed a tremendous store of public goodwill.
But the measures never materialized. Not the least effort was made to establish the obviously essential emergency planning machinery. No "staff meetings" were ever held to measure the problems and allocate the functions and the means for their solution. There has never been a call to the public to tell them how they could tighten their belts and roll up their sleeves, to cooperate in the nation's great effort to live by its own labour and not on foreign handouts. Indeed, the finance minister once even boasted that he had raised the standard of living.
From time to time one hears that the measure to introduce National Arbitration is on the way but there is no sign of the indispensable campaign of public education required for its passage. From time to time the media report the dangerous shrinking percentage of workers in industry but there is no public sign that the government is even aware of the problem. Rental housing, one of the central features of the Likud programme, and the obvious answer to the horrendous housing problem, is now seldom mentioned. Entrepreneurs from abroad, willing and eager to invest in large scale projects for speedy production, are left hanging in the air. Just as in the days of the Alignment.
This is the backdrop to the astounding demonstration of ineptitude and civic cowardice over the issue of subsidies. The particular debacle of that Tuesday did not have to happen. It did, however, illustrate vividly, as in caricature, how this government functions.
The bitter truth is that it is not only in the economic field, in "internal policy," that the government has turned its back on its election promises and then compounded its betrayal by a high degree of shallow improvisation and sheer incompetence. The list is long. It is enough to say here that the prime minister and the foreign minister decided secretly to offer Sinai to the Egyptians without any prior consultation with other members of the cabinet, or with any experts on the implications and consequences military, security, economic, political and social. Indeed, as it subsequently became apparent, they made no study themselves of any of these implications and consequences. Fecklessness and irresponsibility lead in a straight line from Sinai and the autonomy plan down to the setting of the price of bread.
In any ordered society such a government would resign. But what does the alternative look like? The Alignment's two years in opposition have served only to justify the public's verdict against them in 1977. They seem incapable of learning the lessons of their downfall. They are moved only by a negative spirit to undermine the government, even if Israel's interests are thereby damaged.
No, the only hope, at present still theoretical, is in the rise of a new political power in the country which by its integrity, its strength of purpose, its Zionist zeal and sense of national pride, as well as its political skill, will win the confidence of the public and consign both the Likud and the Alignment to the shades of history.
27.7.79 |
