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Imagine
Hirsch Goodman

Netanyahu�s finance minister will be none other than Aryeh Deri

IMAGINE THE FOLLOWING situation. The Sharon national unity government has fallen. Elections have been held. The Likud, led by Benjamin Netanyahu and running on a platform of total war with the Palestinians, wins, and the following become the key ministers in Israel�s new government:

The minister of defense is Avigdor Lieberman, Netanyahu loyalist and current minister of national infrastructure, who openly advocates transfer of the Arabs out of the territories, and who has likened the Israeli Supreme Court to the Ayatollah�s in Iran. Since internal security has now become the major defense issue, Lieberman is also responsible for the police and other internal security forces excluding the Shin Bet, which remains under the prime minister�s authority. Settlement building, roads in the occupied territories and other big budget items are all centralized in the defense ministry. Lieberman -- who has spent his entire political career trying to delegitimize the Israeli police, the attorney general, the Supreme Court and any other institution of state that guards democracy from power-hungry would-be autocrats like himself -- is now one of the most powerful men in the country. His power to move resources in directions he considers important -- more settlements, more roads through the occupied territories, more force against the Palestinians -- is virtually unlimited.

Netanyahu�s foreign minister is Natan Sharansky. As housing minister in the Sharon government, Sharansky did everything he could to support settlement expansion in the West Bank and Gaza as an antidote to Oslo. He used Housing Ministry funds from his PR budget to run a radio, television, press and billboard campaign encouraging families to leave their homes in Israel and move to settlements on the West Bank. He directed almost all housing loans available for young couples and large families to those willing to move to the settlements. He instituted massive loans for anyone crazy enough to move into the Arab Jerusalem neighborhood of Ras al-Amud and for people prepared to live at Har Homah, the massive white-elephant housing project built on the outskirts of Jerusalem, literally a stone�s throw away from Bethlehem, and intended for the National Religious crowd. His voice as foreign minister will be modulated to suit Israel�s diplomatic needs. As housing minister, though, Sharansky�s actions indicated beyond any doubt where his head really is. Exactly the same place as Lieberman�s.

The finance minister will be none other than Aryeh Deri. The dynamic founder of Shas as a political party has been released from jail and retreated into the yeshivah world after being told by Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef that he was no longer welcome in Shas. That is, until Netanyahu has the brilliant idea of bringing Deri to join him in the Likud. Deri "reluctantly" agrees, due to the seriousness of the times, brings tens of thousands of former Likud voters who had gone with Shas back into the party and becomes Netanyahu�s right-hand man. Deri, as finance minister, has incredible power. He also has a big heart directing generous handouts for social causes at a time when deficit spending is at an all-time high due to low tax revenues, increased defense costs and massive unemployment and other welfare outlays by the state. Deri, instead of listening to Finance Ministry and Bank of Israel professionals, continues dishing it out, a recipe for economic disaster.

As for the rest? Tzachi Hanegbi, our current environment minister who could not get a plastic bottle recycled, is back at the Justice Ministry. Joining the crowd, he stands together with Lieberman at the forefront of legislating the creation of a politically appointed Constitutional Court that would replace the independent Supreme Court as the highest legal authority in the land. He is also there to facilitate any new legislation the security services may require in their all-out, never-to-end war with the Palestinians, no matter what the consequences for human rights.

The minister for national infrastructure, the person who decides what gets done when and who has massive executive power, is Effi Eitam, the former army officer kept from becoming a major general by the chief of staff allegedly because of his extreme views, and who led the National Religious Party in the last election. Eitam is an ardent nationalist, a believer, like Lieberman, in the policy of transfer and in Jordan as the Palestinian state. His top priority is massive Israeli settlement building throughout the occupied territories still under Israeli control to end, once and for all, any stupid idea of giving up territory to a people you cannot have peace with.

And, at the top of the pyramid, we have Netanyahu, who will let Deri print more and more money as long as the masses are happy, allow Lieberman to build what he wants, where he wants, deal with the Palestinians in any way he wants, and encourage Hanegbi to get rid of the Supreme Court.