Sharon (left) with Peres
צילום: איי אף פי
What's in a name?
Attempts by ex-Laborites to hide from the fact they joined Kadima are appalling
Over the past several months, there has been an ongoing fight between the journalists and administration of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution over just what to call the people who left New Orleans as a result of Hurricane Katrina last summer. Are they "refugees," "deserters," or "evacuees"?
Nor is this question semantic: It touches on the United States' very personality, its history and identity. The administration instructed "evacuees": Only a person exiled from his homeland can rightly be called a "refugee."
But the journalists rebelled: they suspected their editors of trying to whitewash the extent of the despair, and of being partners to white America's dark designs for the poor and black.
Sometimes a name says it all. Tell me the name you go by and I'll tell you who you are. Take, for example, three honorable Knesset members, refugees in their own land – Shimon Peres, Dalia Itzik and Haim Ramon. This trio has given the impression that they left the Labor Party to join Kadima's election list and to serve as part of Kadima in the government.
No, no, no, they now say, each in his own way. We never left Labor, and we never joined Kadima. The whole thing was "as if." That guy at the press conference with Ariel Sharon to celebrate his addition to Kadima wasn't Shimon Peres. It was really TV host Eli Finish.
That woman who called the Labor Party further left than the radical left-wing Hadash Party wasn't Dalia Itzik. And the man who presented himself, justifiably, as a "founding father" of Kadima wasn't really Haim Ramon. It was actor Tal Friedman.
If they didn't quit Labor, if they weren't uprooted, if they aren't refugees and they aren't evacuees, then what are they? The name says it all.
Legal wrangling
The main reason this trio is having such trouble defining itself is to be found in two laws; Basic Law: The Knesset and Basic Law: The Government.
According to Basic Law: Knesset section 6 (A), "A member of Knesset who leaves his faction and does not resign from office at the time of his leaving, shall not be included, in the election of the next Knesset, in the list of candidates submitted by a party that was represented by a faction of the outgoing Knesset." In other words, officially leaving Labor would prevent them from returning to the Knesset as members of Kadima.
And the Basic Law: Government: Knesset prevents them from serving in the current government. According to section 6(E), "a member seceding from his faction and failing to tender his resignation as a Knesset member may not be appointed as a Minister during the period of service of that Knesset."
This clause prompted Tzachi Hanegbi to resign from the Knesset the day he joined Kadima. It was the only way he could continue to sit in government.
But Peres, Itzik and Ramon missed the train: If they stay in the Knesset they cannot sit in government because of this law, and if they resign they cannot sit in government because non–MKs cannot be added to an interim government.
Appalling attempt
These laws are intended to prevent vote-buying by Knesset members. That's not what's going on here: Kadima does not need their votes and has not asked for their support. For their part, the Labor Party has checked out in recent weeks whether it can declare the trio "deserters," but have gotten conflicting legal opinions.
There are plenty of precedents to the phenomenon, including Amir Peretz and Dan Meridor, who joined new parties without resigning from their old ones.
Still, attempt by these three to burn both ends of the candle is appalling. Sharon's illness has made it all the more so: The three cannot continue to claim that they supported Sharon, but not Kadima.
It is Peres' right to clarify his standing should he choose to remain in an Olmert-led Kadima, but by playing back-and-forth between Labor and Kadima; he gives himself, and politics, a bad name.
Nahum Barnea is a regular contributor to Israel’s leading newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth
