Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 14, 1990 TAG: 9003142941
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: JERUSALEM LENGTH: Medium
The end came dramatically at a morning Cabinet meeting when Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, rebuffed in a last-minute attempt to continue consultations, fired Shimon Peres, the head of the Labor Party, who is his finance minister and deputy prime minister.
The other 10 Labor ministers promptly resigned and walked out of the Cabinet room.
Peres told a news conference, convened within an hour in his Finance Ministry offices, that Labor had introduced a motion of no-confidence in the Shamir-led government and would vote Thursday in the Knesset, Israel's parliament, to try to bring the regime down.
"We think there is a chance . . . to form a [Labor-led] coalition" if Shamir's Likud Bloc is defeated in the vote, Peres told reporters. "If we do, then, as in the past, the guideline will be the peace process."
Peres said the prime minister had handed him a request for his resignation just five minutes into the Cabinet meeting.
"We didn't exchange a word," he noted.
While a door is still slightly ajar to salvage the coalition before Thursday, bitter comments from both sides suggested that, if the no-confidence resolution passes, Israel faces drawn-out attempts by both Likud and Labor to form a government with a slim majority made up with the support from small religious parties. Failing that, new general elections would be called. The last were held in November 1988.
If Shamir's forces withstand the no-confidence vote, he will continue as prime minister and try to form a coalition of the right. Neither side suggested the broad coalition of the two big parties could be put back together should the government fall.
The coalition collapse threatens to derail efforts to start a peace process. Israel's first direct talks with Palestinians over the future of the occupied West Bank and Gaza, proposed by Shamir last May, have been stymied by fundamental divisions between the two big parties. Shamir's break with Peres came over the Labor leader's demand for an immediate answer to an American formula for forming a preliminary Palestinian delegation for talks in Cairo.
"I believe the responsibility for breaking up the national unity government will be put on minister Shamir," said Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who sat somberly with Peres, his party leader, at the news conference.
National Religious Party leader Zevulun Hammer said he would continue to seek a formula to bridge the differences between Likud and Labor, and Rabin himself appeared prepared to listen. But Peres told reporters: "The compromises are behind us, not before us."
In the 1988 elections, Likud won 40 seats and Labor 39 in the 120-seat Knesset, Israel's parliament. The other seats are divided between small religious, rightist and leftist parties. Likud has the support of the rightists and reportedly at least two of the four religious parties. Labor is backed by the leftist parties and will be seeking the support of two ultra-Orthodox religious parties, Agudat Ysrael and Degel Hatorah, considered to hold the balance of power in a very narrow alignment.
by CNB