Word: knesset
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Accustomed though they are to high-voltage political shocks, Israelis must have found last week unusually electrifying. Premier Menachem Begin's coalition lost a crucial vote in the Knesset, thereby threatening a defection that could reduce his government's majority to two. Faced with protests by fanatic nationalists over the court-ordered evacuation of a Jewish settlement at Elon Moreh, the Cabinet unanimously voted to forge ahead with new settlements in the West Bank. But the most powerful jolt of the week was a Cabinet decision approving the deportation of the Palestinian mayor of the West Bank city...
...Knesset members were outraged. After meeting with Begin, Defense Minister Ezer Weizman, who is Matt's superior, announced that Shaka'a would be deported to Jordan. Shaka'a's wife, however, managed to block the expulsion by winning an interim injunction from a justice of the Israeli Supreme Court. Weizman then ordered Shaka'a arrested and jailed until the court hearings...
Perhaps because his thoughts dwelled so much on the West Bank last week, Begin seemed strangely impervious to his coalition's defeat in the Knesset over an amendment to the country's abortion law. Agudat Israel, an orthodox religious party, had joined the Begin bloc in exchange for the Premier's support of its campaign to limit abortions. A motion to tighten the country's laws on the matter was defeated in a tie vote, 54-54, when four members of Begin's own Likud Party voted against it. Agudat Israel huffed that its four...
...same day, the government removed the subsidies for cooking oil and other household products, and prices for those items jumped by 50%. During a stormy session of the Knesset, where the ruling Likud coalition now has a majority of only six seats, Begin survived a series of no-confidence motions. But observers were predicting that it was only a matter of time before the beleaguered Premier would be obliged to call new elections...
...Eliav's enjoying his break. "Politicians everywhere should take a sabbatical, just the way people from academia do," Eliav, who resigned his Knesset seat to come to the Center for International Affairs, says. "Professors need a year every seven to recharge their intellectual batteries. That is even more true of politicians, who can become more locked in, more parochial and self-centered...