Sharon pressures UTJ to join coalition

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon intends to apply massive pressure on United Torah Judaism to join the government after Shinui announced yesterday its willingness to be part of a coalition with the ultra-Orthodox party.

Sharon is expected to entice UTJ by possibly offering to reinstate funding of yeshivas that had been drastically cut in recent years.

Despite the ultra-Orthodox party's immediate rhetorical opposition to Shinui's announcement, it apears that stalled coalition negotiations have been unclogged.

Shinui's decision is a dramatic reversal of its long-held position against serving in the same government with any Haredi party.

Labor and Likud coalition negotiating teams were back at talks last night in Ramat Gan, and despite some angry talk from party colleagues such as MK Moshe Gafni, MK Avraham Ravitz said that there were "good chances" UTJ would join the new coalition Sharon is trying to form with the three largest parties - Likud, Labor and Shinui. The five-seat United Torah Judaism would be a religious addendum to the coalition, to assuage concerns inside the Likud about losing touch with its traditionalist constituencies.

The Shinui Knesset faction yesterday formally approved a decision apparently made the day before by party chairman Justice Minister Yosef Lapid and his number two, Interior Minister Avraham Poraz, during a meeting with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

The prime minister reportedly told the two ministers that he had decided to bring UTJ into a coalition made up of Likud, Labor, Shinui and the Haredi party. If necessary, the prime minister intimated, he would drop Shinui from the coalition.

Lapid and Poraz left that meeting telling the media that they remained opposed to a government that included either Shas or United Torah Judaism. But a leak yesterday morning to the press forced a meeting of the Shinui Knesset faction, which voted 11-3 to take part in a coalition with UTJ - on several conditions: that UTJ only joined the coalition after the Labor Party joined, and that UTJ would vote with the coalition but would not receive any ministerial portfolios.

Lapid also predicated Shinui's acceptance of UTJ on the Haredi party's agreement to refrain from implementing changes to the Tal Law, concerning draft exemptions for yeshiva students, and the law concerning civil marriage. Lapid said current circumstances have led him to alter his position of strenuous opposition to the presence of ultra-Orthodox parties in the government.

"There are times in life when you must understand the requirements of the moment," he said, insisting "we said we would be prepared for this sacrifice to order to secure a strong and stable government ... This was not an easy change to make. It is a change that comes as a result of the fact that there are important issues on the government's agenda, such as the Gaza pullout and the economic plan. We don't want to continue to be a radical party with only one agenda, which can't see what is going on around it and does not help Sharon implement the disengagement."

But responding to the change in Shinui's position, MK Moshe Gafni said that his party would not support a government that includes Shinui. "We will not support such a government, not from the inside and not from the outside," he said. "There is no possibility of a platform such as United Torah Judaism [working] along with the platform, if such a thing exists, of Shinui - it is not being considered."

UTJ MK Avraham Ravitz said that "we must kick them and get rid of them. We cannot sit together with people like these."

Lapid, who spoke at the beginning of a party meeting at the Knesset, vehemently rejected claims by the ultra-Orthodox Sephardi Shas party that Shinui's decision to accept the Ashkenazi UTJ while rejecting Shas was racist. "It is not us who created Shas' ethnicity. We have no part in this and we invite any Sephardi Jew to join Shinui," Lapid said.

MKs Ilan Leibowitz, Hemi Doron and Yigal Yasinov were the only Shinui MKs to vote against the party's changed platform. Yasinov also threatened to vote against the government in a no-confidence vote over Likud's coalition talks with the UTJ.

But despite the rhetorical opposition inside UTJ to joining a coalition with Shinui, Ravitz said that his party would seek ministerial portfolios, which no Ashkenazi Haredi party has ever held, and that there was a "good chance" that UTJ would join the coalition.

	Justice Minister Yosef Lapid conferring with Prime Minister ArielSharon during a Knesset plenum discussion yesterday.
	Photo by: Lior Mizrahi / BauBa