Last update - 00:00 08/02/2008
Shas preparing for elections it expects will be held this year
By Mazal Mualem, Haaretz Correspondent
Shas chairman Eli Yishai has begun preparing his party for elections, believing they may be held before the end of the year.
Yishai reiterated the order by the party's spiritual leader, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, to quit Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government immediately if Jerusalem is discussed in the talks with the Palestinians.
"I don't know how long this government will keep going; I assume there will be elections soon, perhaps even before the local authorities' elections scheduled for November," Yishai said on Wednesday at a meeting of Shas activists in Tiberias.
Yishai said in private conversations that now that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had "survived" the Winograd Report and managed to keep the Labor Party in the government, he would advance a deal to release abducted soldier Gilad Shalit and accelerate the talks with the Palestinians.
Yishai assumes that Olmert will try to reach the next elections with an outline for the final-status agreement with the Palestinians, including all the core issues such as Jerusalem, which Shas regards as a reason to quit the government.
Yishai believes that Olmert will try to turn the elections into a kind of referendum on the agreement.
Senior Shas figures have recently expressed fears that Olmert might launch a diversion to distract attention from the Jerusalem issue and to keep Shas in the government. They said they had grounds to believe that Olmert already had an agreement with the Palestinians, with which he would run in elections.
Shas has hardened its positions vis-a-vis the peace process after Yisrael Beiteinu left the government due to Olmert's willingness to discuss the core issues with the Palestinians.
Yishai is signaling to Olmert that Shas' threats to quit the government over Jerusalem are serious.
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