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Posted on 03/17/2004 6:36:16 AM PST by Alouette
After defeating opponent Ran Cohen by a 9% margin in Tuesday's vote for the hegemony over the newly formed Yahad party, chairman Yossi Beilin made an impassioned plea Wednesday morning to Shimon Peres to spawn overtures by the Likud aimed at creating a national unity government.
Instead, he said, the Labor Party should join forces with him in creating an opposition custodian whose mission is "shortening the days of Sharon's government."
Labor party officials dismissed Beilin's call for unity and rejected his claim that they were seeking admittance into the cabinet. "While we were busy working in the Knesset," they told Army Radio Wednesday, "he was off abroad."
Meanwhile, Justice Minister Yosef Lapid said Wednesday morning that the State Comptroller should investigate the financial sources of Beilin's election campaign and for the funding of his Geneva initiative.
"Beilin is financing his campaigns from foreign sources," Lapid said, "apparently advancing peace initiatives, but in fact promoting his own political aims."
Beilin later retaliated at a press conference, calling Lapid the worst justice minister Israel has ever had. "His reaction to last night's election proves Shinui is scared of the threat we pose to them," Beilin said.
Yossi Beilin's victory was announced after votes were counted Tuesday night in the new party's leadership race.
73% of voters turned out, 8446 of them voting for Beilin and 7056 for Cohen. Beilin won 60 percent of the vote in Tel-Aviv and Haifa.
He said that the small margin was testament voters expectations that the party's social platform be on par with its political platform.
Rival, Ran Cohen conceded defeat, thanking his staff and saying their efforts and his defeat was "honorable"; he later said he had no intention of creating a camp within the new party.
Beilin replaces Yossi Sarid, who forced out Shulamit Aloni and became Meretz leader in 1996. Sarid quit the Meretz chairmanship after the party fell to only six mandates in the January 2003 election.
Sarid released a statement congratulating Beilin on his victory, and Cohen on his strong achievement in the race.
Sarid said he was confident that under Beilin's leadership Yahad would reach new heights.
Beilin supporters cheered their leader at campaign headquarters, calling him 'the next prime minister'.
Beilin spoke with Cohen over the phone and invited his defeated rival to join him at his campaign headquarters for the victory party. Cohen refused, saying he would rather stay with his staff.
In his victory speech, Beilin said he respected Cohen's efforts in the campaign. "I am pleased with the results. The Left is going forward. This is yes to peace. This is yes to the Geneva Initiative, and to social justice. The Left will be an alternative to the great chasm of the Right," he said.
Turning his attention to the current government, Beilin said, "the Sharon government is the worst government Israel has ever had. Look what happened today. More assassinations after terror attacks. Which will be followed by terror attacks following assassinations. Nobody is telling them to stop this stupidity. Is there nobody in the Right that can see the endless cycle of violence? It is like a blind horse falling into a ravine, again and again," he added.
He said he was ashamed at the Labor Party's behavior and said that Yahad would fight Labor if it joins the government. He called on Shimon Peres to form an opposition leadership team made up of the heads of the opposition parties, which he refereed to as Yitzhak Rabin's coalition of 1992.
Beilin said that if the opposition succeeds in bringing down the government then the same 1992 coalition of leftist and Haredi parties could become the next government and finish what Rabin started.
This call to the Haredim is a dramatic change in Meretz policy, which used to be an anti-Haredi party. Meretz is expected to be sympathetic to Haredis under Beilin's leadership.
Cohen did better in poorer cities and towns like Yeroham, Ofakim, and Ashdod, while Beilin won in upper-class communities like Herzliya and Ramat Hasharon.
In several Arab, Bedouin, and Druse communities, people voted unanimously for one candidate. Kfar Kana and Rahat were unanimous for Beilin while Nin and Bueina Nujidat were unanimous for Cohen.
Cohen, 64, born in Baghdad and raised in Kibbutz Gan Shmuel. He was a Lt.-Gen in the IDF. He entered the Knesset in 1984, where he helped enact the Minimum Wage Law and Public Housing Law. He served as deputy housing minister under Yitzhak Rabin and industry and trade minister under Ehud Barak. He lives in Mevaseret Zion with his wife and four children.
Beilin, 56, was born in Petah Tikva. He wrote for the Davar newspaper and served as Labor spokesman and cabinet secretary before joining the Knesset in 1984.
He has served as deputy foreign affairs minister, deputy finance minister, economics and planning minister, and justice minister.
Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, Beilin's political nemesis, forced him out of the Labor list for the Knesset last year.
He then joined the Meretz list but failed to make the Knesset. Beilin negotiated the Geneva Accord with the Palestinians, which pressured the government to come up with diplomatic initiatives of its own.
Some 21,000 Yahad members were eligible to vote in 150 polling stations across the country. One third the eligible voters were in kibbutzim, thousands were in cities, more than 3000 were Arabs and more than 900 Druse.
In Kibbutz Ga'ash, voters who came to the kibbutz's main hall were split between the candidates, who both visited the kibbutz. They complimented both Beilin and Cohen and said they wished the choice between the two could have been avoided.
"I voted for Cohen, because he is trustworthy and because he will focus the party on social issues," said Susana Maszkala, who came with her husband Moshe to vote.
Cohen supporters said they voted for him, because they believe he could bring new voters to the party from poorer sectors of the population. But Ga'ash kibbutz member Shua Faust said Yahad should seek voters from Shinui instead.
"Beilin can bring back the middle-class people who left to Shinui," Faust said. "The goal is to bring more mandates and Beilin is the one who can do it."
In an effort to preempt attacks from Yahad and prove that they are still the dominant opposition party, Labor leaders have called a press conference for Wednesday morning to highlight the government's mistakes in its first year in office.
In case anyone has any lingering doubts that he has completely flipped out.
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