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Friday April 23, 1999

Deri conviction changes tactics of prime ministerial candidates

DAVID LANDAU
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

JERUSALEM -- The four-year jail sentence imposed last week on Shas leader Aryeh Deri for taking bribes has forced Israel's candidates for prime minister to re-examine their vote-getting tactics.

Deri's political power is undisputed: He was responsible for the evolution of the 15-year-old fervently religious Shas Party into a political force that, with 10 seats, is the third-largest party in the outgoing Knesset.

That power has also given Shas control over the Interior Ministry portfolio not only in the present Likud government, but in the Labor government that preceded it.

In the wake of Deri's conviction and sentencing, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, wanting Deri's numerous supporters firmly in his camp in the May 17 election, decided that he would be willing to negotiate with Deri on a future coalition if he were re-elected premier.

After much deliberation, Labor Party leader Ehud Barak went the other way, announcing that he would not hold coalition negotiations with Deri if elected prime minister -- and that he would not agree to give Shas the Interior Ministry again.

In effect writing off Shas support with that announcement, Barak has instead turned his attention on another powerful voting segment of the Israeli population, immigrants from the former Soviet Union.

Barak is attempting to rally immigrant anger against Shas, maintaining that there were too many cases in which the Shas-led Interior Ministry harshly treated members of the immigrant community who were not classified by religious law as Jewish.

Barak wants to see the ministry in the hands of a party that "would treat every person entitled to make aliyah under the Law of Return as equal," he said, referring to the law that entitles relatives of Jews to make aliyah even if they themselves are not halachically Jewish.

Shas' reaction to Barak's stance was swift.

The rabbis of the party, Deri said, would "doubtless take Barak's positions into account" when they decided which of the prime ministerial candidates they would call on their followers to support.

The announcements from Netanyahu and Barak did not come easily, given the legal issues emerging from Deri's conviction. After a trial that lasted four years, Deri was convicted of pocketing $155,000 while holding several positions in the Interior Ministry in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The question of Deri's possible role in post-election coalition negotiations has become the focus of much public debate in the days since his sentence was handed down.

In their initial reactions to the court's decision, Netanyahu, Barak and Yitzhak Mordechai, the Center Party candidate for premier, all waffled, almost in unison.

All expressed sympathy for Deri and his family. All voiced support for the rule of law and the decisions of the courts.

All steered carefully clear, however, of saying they would not deal with Deri if he led his party in post-election coalition negotiations. Barak initially said that question was hypothetical and therefore need not be addressed.

A fourth prime ministerial candidate, rightist coalition leader Ze'ev "Benny" Begin, was the sole person in the race to pledge firmly and unequivocally that he would not negotiate with Deri -- because the Shas leader now has the status of a convicted criminal.

As a result of the court's verdict, Deri no longer enjoys a presumption of innocence, Begin argued.

That was also the stance adopted by virtually the entire legal and judicial community in the wake of the verdict.

The near-unanimous sentiment of the nation's lawyers and judges was given powerful expression over the weekend by Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein, the government's top legal adviser.

He lambasted the three candidates for premier, describing their failure to eschew any further political dealing with Deri as a "silence of the lambs."

Four of the best-known figures on the Labor Party's Knesset list -- Yossi Beilin, Shlomo Ben-Ami, Uzi Baram and Benjamin Ben-Eliezer -- demanded that Barak make a flat and public refusal to negotiate with Deri after the election.

Barak writhed, apparently anxious not to alienate the Shas constituency.

But finally, in an interview with the Israeli daily Yediot Achronot, Barak said that he would not be prepared to negotiate with Deri and that, if elected premier, he would not agree to Shas holding the Interior Ministry.

Netanyahu, on the other hand, ultimately decided to maintain his close embrace of the Shas leader.

Meanwhile, the Jerusalem District Court has accepted Deri's plea for a stay of sentence pending his appeal.

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