Its my party and I'll cry if I want to

w w w . h a a r e t z d a i l y . c o m

It's my party and I'll cry if I want to

A month before the elections - and in Kiryat Malakhi, Jerusalem and Beit Shemesh, there are no Likud meetings, no parlor groups and no posters. Many activists are saying they will not vote for the party that has been their home for years

Tuesday evening, the staff of the election headquarters of the Likud in Kiryat Malakhi was supposed to have met. Well in advance, Lior Katsav, the mayor of Kiryat Malakhi and the head of the election headquarters, had informed the major activists of the meeting, which was supposed to have launched the election campaign in the city. A day earlier, he had sent his deputy, Moshe Shimon, to Metsudat Ze'ev, Likud's central headquarters in Tel Aviv.

Shimon was supposed to have come back armed with a fat check with which to finance the activities, a list of registered party members, lists of activists and volunteers, posters, and a description of the tasks for the remaining time before the elections. At the end of the day, Shimon came back to Kiryat Malakhi empty-handed and looking grim. He reported to Katsav, who decided to cancel the meeting of the campaign headquarters staff.

"Shimi told me that he found more life in the Kiryat Malakhi cemetery than he did at Metsudat Ze'ev," related Katsav a few hours after he canceled the event. "He told me that as a long-time Likud member, he had never seen such a thing, that he found the large building like a haunted house. The workers were afraid to talk, and everyone was busy reading newspapers about corruption-related affairs. Shimi wandered among the rooms and couldn't find anyone to talk to. Finally they told him that there wasn't any more budget and there were no lists and there was no anything."

Katsav cannot recall anything else like this. A month before the elections, there is not a sign in the city that indicates what is going to happen. There are no meetings, there are no parlor meetings, no posters and the main activists have nothing to do.

"What happened in the Likud does not make things easier for me," admitted Katsav. "The people in this town do not believe that the elections will change anything. They are disappointed and despairing. I meet citizens and I see their burned-out looks. I meet the regular activists and I see that the fire has gone out of their eyes. Their enthusiasm is gone."

He himself lacks motivation to be active in the coming elections. A few months ago, he decided to run for a place on the Knesset list and was defeated. In those elections, he learned an important lesson about friendship and promises.

"I ran with the support of [Foreign Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu and [MK] Yisrael Katz. They told me that I had to run in order to stop Omri Sharon from getting into the Knesset. Omri and I contended in the regional election and with the support of Netanyahu and Katz, I was sure that I was already in the Knesset. On the day of the elections, I was optimistic. At seven o'clock in the evening, I realized that all was lost. Katz's chief vote contractor informed me that at six that evening, a decision had been taken to support Omri Sharon. I asked why. He told me that at 2 P.M., the prime minister had phoned Katz and promised to make him a minister in the next government, if he put his son Omri in his deal. Katz agreed and kicked me out, without even blinking."

Katsav is now pondering what to call this act - political bribery or political cheating. Either way, the affair has left him with deep scars. The election process has also hurt his pride. He remembers how he was forced almost to grovel to please Likud Central Committee members, whose new status implanted megalomaniac feelings in them.

One meeting in particular is etched in his memory: "I asked to meet a certain central committee member, who has influence," he recalled. "I came to him with friends and activists from Kiryat Malakhi. The man let us wait for two hours outside his office. After all, I'm a mayor and I thought I deserved a bit of respect. After over two hours, he came out of his office, looked me up and down and said to me in the tone of a master addressing his slave: `I have exactly five minutes for you.' That was so insulting."

The next day, the central committee member phoned and offered to support him. "He told me that he had another 20 committee members in his pocket who do what he tells them. I was glad. And then he offered to put a picture of me into the publicity brochure he was about to publish. I was glad of the gesture. Suddenly he said to me that the price ranges between NIS 5,000 and NIS 10,000. I was stunned. I had no alternative and I paid. Several days later, I saw the thin brochure and in it there were pictures of me along with more than 100 other candidates."

Katsav came to the conclusion that all lines had been crossed in the elections for the Likud list. He saw government ministers, Knesset members and mayors undergoing unprecedented humiliation, in order to placate central committee members who were drunk on power.

"In retrospect, I would have preferred to go from door to door in Kiryat Malakhi and ask for support just so as not to experience the humiliation of the primaries. I have no doubt that the Likud will be considerably weakened, both at the level of activism and at the level of voting."

`Everything is paralyzed'

And this is the case not only in Kiryat Malakhi. In Jerusalem, too, which chalked up a record in the number of voters registered, Likud activity is in a state of paralysis. This is also the case in Beit Shemesh, a well-known party bastion. Benny Vaknin, the mayor and the head of the campaign headquarters there, has not yet convened the campaign headquarters staff in the city.

"Ask Likudniks in Jerusalem where campaign headquarters is and they'll tell you that they don't know," related a senior member of the city's headquarters staff, who asked to remain anonymous. "Pick up the phone to people and call on them to come to activities and they'll tell you, `No thanks, we're not interested.' Likud members are fed up with what happened at the elections for the list of Knesset candidates. The key activists are fed up with the series of elections that has been going on intensively for three months now. First, they're called upon to elect the candidates for the party branches and the convention; second, they're called upon to choose between Netanyahu and Sharon; and the third time around, they're called upon to choose the new Knesset list. In a month, they're going to vote again in the Knesset elections. Four times in less than three months. This isn't human.

"You contact people and all you hear is complaints and vexation. They tell you that they aren't prepared to work for this list. To get Inbal Gavrieli into the Knesset? Or Daniel Ben-Lulu from Ashdod? Or Michael Gorolovsky, who was [Yisrael Beiteinu MK Avigdor] Lieberman's driver? Or Ruhama Avraham, who was Netanyahu's secretary?

"There's a flabbiness in the activism the likes of which I can't remember ever since I became active in the Likud. This flabbiness comes both from tiredness and especially from the whole business of the investigations. Everyone who's been mentioned in the context of the investigations, or has been investigated by the police, or whose name has been mentioned in the newspaper - all of them have disappeared and gone underground. They don't want to be active.

"There's never been a situation like this when a month before the elections there's nothing. The party is now busy with its television campaign ads, most of which will concentrate on Sharon in order to distract Likud voters. Within two weeks, I have to man 2,000 polling stations around the country. This isn't a process that gets completed in a single day. No one is working on this now, because central headquarters is not yet at work, the branches around the country are paralyzed, there are no budgets and there are no lists of activists and volunteers. Everything is paralyzed.

"Of course this will be expressed at the ballot box. As of today, I'm not sure that we will get past the 27 Knesset seats. In this situation, I'm afraid that the left will manage to put up a bloc and I'm not even discounting the possibility that Sharon will lose the elections."

In search of another party

The headquarters meeting in Kiryat Malakhi was canceled and many Likud members got together in the living room of Yossi Peretz's apartment to ventilate. All of them voted for the Likud in the last elections and many of them had intended to do so in the coming elections. During the past year, they began to have doubts. Apart from one, all of them have changed their minds and will vote for some other party. Not just because of the scandals at the Fairgrounds or the personal make-up of the list, but because of the shaky economy and the increasing poverty and the mounting despair and the sinking feeling that the party has failed in running the country.

Peretz related that he grew up in the lap of Likud ideology. Even back when his parents lived in Tunis, they were proud members of Betar and instilled the movement's heritage in their son. "The truth is that I was frightened by the reports about the corruption," he related. "I was alarmed that this corruption could spread and destroy the fabric of life in this country. I was at the primaries at the Fairgrounds and I saw the way food was handed out and the way gifts were handed out and I was shocked by the sight. Outside, there's distress and poverty and here you see scenes of eye-popping wastefulness - of huge tents and of candidates you've never heard of in your life. I felt very miserable. This time maybe I'll vote for [Meretz leader MK] Yossi Sarid. For the first time in my life, I won't vote Likud. I don't agree with anything Sarid represents with respect to defense and foreign policy, but this person is for the south and the periphery more than all the Likud put together."

During the discussion that went on into the middle of the night, the Likud members looked for a new political home where they could find shelter - temporary or even permanent. They talked about Meretz and Shinui and Shas and National Union, but none of them let the words "Labor Party" cross his lips. As if that were a nightmare. All of them are second-generation immigrants from Arab countries who settled in Kiryat Malakhi in the 1950s. All of them still have bad memories of the period when Mapai, the precursor of the Labor Party, was in power.

"Amram Mitzna is a brilliant and straight person, but never in my life will I vote for Labor," explained Shlomo Azouri. "The Likud has changed since [Menachem] Begin's time. To my regret, it is now controlled by crime. In the party branch elections, I was disgusted to go into the voting booth because the moment I understood that it was the central committee members who would decide who gets into the Knesset, I knew that that it would all be totally nauseating."

After brief reflection, he decided to break a long tradition. He will not vote for the Likud. For several days, he wavered between Meretz and Shinui and finally decided in favor of Shinui, because it tends more to the right.

"I would vote for Meretz, if they weren't extreme in the matter of peace," he added. "What killed me was when they petitioned the High Court of Justice about the `neighbor procedure' [the forced use of neighbors to gain entry into the homes of wanted Palestinians - Ed.] in the army. How can you petition the High Court of Justice against our soldiers? Meretz has something wrong in the head. But the most important thing is that the Likud win less than 25 seats, because it does not deserve to be in power after what it has done."

Eli Jerbi has also decided to leave his mother party, with no separation anxiety and no bad conscience: "I've been a Likud activist as long as I can remember," he explained. "The truth is that what broke me this time wasn't the money. There's always been money. Isn't it the case that I, for example, as a key activist, have to bring people to the voting station? Don't I have to drive them there? Aren't you going to give them a taxi? Aren't you going to give them a little pocket money? Are you just going to bother people and get them out of their houses? All this costs money, and I think that you have to pay, because no one does anything voluntarily these days.

"But what angered me most was the list that was elected. I know that the country is facing very difficult situations in every area and I know that after the elections, decisions will have to be made about our life. And who's going to raise his hand in the Knesset - who is this Ben-Lulu? Who is Avraham? And Gavrieli? Are these people going to decide my children's fate? Are these people going to determine what my life will be like?

"I think that the Likud will lose. I thought about voting for Sharon, but because of the Likud, I won't vote for him. I think that I will abstain in the elections, or I'll look for another party for myself. If Meretz had opinions similar to the Labor Party, I'd vote Meretz because I'm looking for a social party. I'm not the only one who feels that way. Almost all the Likud members have been telling me that they don't know what to do."

Pride of the oppressed

During the course of the evening, a vociferous argument broke out between Yoram Ezer and Shai Peretz. Peretz, who serves as chairman of the students' association at Achva College, tried to explain that the Likud has hurt the weaker classes and increased the gaps in society. Ezer, who works in the municipal inspectorate, clung to the Likud with all his might and tried to convince everyone there that the very existence of the state is at stake, and that only Sharon can undertake this mission successfully. The others rejected his arguments and reminded him of the personal sacrifice the Likud has exacted from the weaker classes - the cut in the welfare budgets, the huge flow of funds to the Jewish settlements in the territories, the growing unemployment and poverty.

"And who isn't `eating' this if not we in the development towns?" asked Peretz.

Ezer asked to say something personal. In an emotional voice, he reminded those present of the days when the Likud enabled them to stand up tall: "Don't judge the Likud the way it looks now," he pleaded. "Do you remember what the Likud became strong from? From the people. What is the people? It's us. It's the workers who are mostly from the eastern ethnic communities, and this includes Iraqis and Moroccans and Kurds and a few people from the European communities. And also from several reasons of oppression. I belong to those whom the Likud lifted up a bit. Today I am a person who is working and I have a profession. If it hadn't been for the Likud, I'd have been a criminal. Therefore, with all due respect to you, I'm voting Likud until my dying day. Because I'm not a traitor to my principles."

Peretz did not change his mind. In a quiet voice, he addressed his friend and explained to him that he had intended to vote for the Likud, but when he saw which Likud members were going to represent him in the Knesset, he began to have doubts. "It's hard for me to vote for a party that has chosen people like that," he added excitedly, "people who are not fit to be Knesset members. I will not vote Likud even if I want Sharon. Do you know how many students have told me that they also aren't going to vote for the Likud?"

Suddenly the loud voices died down and the friends moved on to other subjects. They have always gathered enthusiastically before the elections and acted as one man for the one and only party. This time, the sense of family is gone, the enthusiasm has evaporated and opinions are split.

"I can't remember such sad elections ever in my life," said Peretz in a whisper.

_{By Daniel
Ben Simon}