Word: mitznah
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...coalition partners of his choice, but the prime minister is refusing the option of building a narrow coalition with Likud's natural allies among the far-right and religious parties. Instead, to the consternation of his own party's base, Sharon is bending over backwards to make dove Amram Mitznah his senior coalition partner...
...Mitznah, leader of the Labor Party, is stubbornly refusing. It's easy to see why; Labor activists see rejoining Sharon in government as the kiss of death for the traditional party of peace, because such coalitions typically agree to avoid taking positions in the areas that most sharply divide their members - and in the case of Labor and Likud, those differences run to the fundamentals of what is required for peace with the Palestinians. Mitznah took over party leadership from former defense minister Benjamin Ben Eliezer precisely because Labor had lost its independent identity while serving as the junior partner...
...Having the Labor Party as a coalition partner rather than right-wing and religious parties even more hard-line than Likud therefore gives Sharon the domestic political cover to make decisions unpopular with his own base but necessary for his ties with Washington. Indeed, Mitznah's presence in the government would make managing the relationship easier for the Bush administration too by offsetting any domestic pressure in the U.S. against restraining Israel's more hard-line instincts - better to have the Israeli government drawing its own red lines by virtue of a coalition agreement than imposing those red lines from...
...Sharon's aides have vowed that the prime minister will make Mitznah an offer he can't refuse, believing that pressure from the party's base and the state of crisis-alert brought on by the prospect of U.S. action in Iraq will force Labor into a coalition. Ironically, the dovish party's presence in government has been made more important precisely because of the strength of Sharon's mandate from the Right, which the prime minister will want to dilute somewhat in order to pursue his own version of a peace plan with his more potent coalition partner...
...Mitznah may face an internal revolt that could see Labor once again accepting the junior role in Sharon's government, but if not, he may have to look towards a narrower coalition of hard-line nationalist and religious parties. The wildcard in the current election, however, is the centrist Shinui party of Tommy Lapid, which has surged from the political margins on a platform of militant secularism. Lapid's peace policies are somewhat vague, but his challenge to the privileges of the ultra-Orthodox who are exempt from military service and study at state expense has proved so popular that...