The party has cleverly taken advantage of a political vacuum not being filled by any other party.
By MATTHEW WAGNERyishai looking sharp 224(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
Shas's decision to stand firm on its demand for boosted child allotments, even if it means it could find itself outside a narrow Kadima coalition, marks a turning point in the haredi Sephardi party's political maturity.
By placing the war against poverty at the forefront of its coalition negotiation demands, Shas cleverly took advantage of a political vacuum not being filled by any other party - social activism.
Championing the poor, and not the yeshiva world, also helped Shas break out of its parochial haredi-Sephardi mold to appeal to a much larger constituency - the poor.
What's more, even if Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni does put together a Shas-free coalition, it would be unlikely to last very long and early elections would be in the offing. A Shas stint in opposition would probably only be temporary.
Shas can come out looking like a principled party, unwilling to compromise its values.
Labor, with its quasi socio-democratic tradition, should be the logical candidate to fight the battle of the economically disenfranchised. But the party, wracked by infighting and a leadership crisis, is too concerned about losing much of its Knesset representation, and its place in government, in early elections to have raised serious socio-economic demands as its condition for joining a Livni coalition.
Meanwhile the Pensioners, whose very raison d'etre is to aid the elderly poor, seem to lack both the necessary political power and the will.
Shas identified the socioeconomic niche as a source of political power several years ago.
In the 2006 elections, it ran TV commercials that focused almost exclusively on the "heartless" neoconservative economic policies instituted by Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
In the TV clips, visibly Sephardi men and women, many of them secular, were "spontaneously" interviewed on the streets of development towns or the slums of the nation's big cities.
They complained about government policies while "hard facts" about poverty levels flashed across the screen.
Shas spiritual mentor Rabbi Ovadia Yosef did not create Shas to help the poor. He knew that there are plenty of non-profit organizations out there that run soup kitchens, provide basic necessities and comfort the needy.
Yosef's primary objective in establishing a political party was always to restore Sephardi Jewry's lost respect vis a vis the intellectual hegemony of the Ashkenazi haredi yeshiva world.
Back in the early 1980s, when Shas was created, first as a municipal-level party and later as a national party, Yosef's striving for political power was fueled by a desire to fortify Torah scholarship among Sephardi Jews.
Yosef hoped that by securing political clout and giving a voice to tens of thousands of traditional Oriental Israelis, he could bring about a cultural renaissance and spark a resurgence of religious adherence. He was right.
But Yosef also understands political expediency. "No bread, no Torah," runs a famous rabbinic saying. If Shas wishes to continue to grow, it has to be sensitive to the economic needs of its constituency, not just its spiritual needs. After all, how many truly haredi Sephardim are there sitting learning in yeshivot?
Also, it is safe to assume that Sephardim, who on average have fewer years of education and earn less than Ashkenazim, were disproportionately hurt by welfare cuts that began in 2002. And with a global financial crisis raging, economic issues have become even more critical.
This is true even in Israel, where security and diplomatic matters normally totally eclipse voters' concerns about the economy. Shas is betting that economic issues are not going to get less urgent and people are not going to become less poor.
Meanwhile, the Likud's Binyamin Netanyahu, who, more than anyone else, is identified with the recent welfare cuts, has made public overtures to Shas.
In a holiday interview with Shas's mouthpiece Yom Le'yom, Netanyahu promised to be sensitive to Shas's fiscal demands. Netanyahu has also met recently with Yosef to discuss child allotments.
There are additional signs that Netanyahu and Shas are growing closer. Yitzhak Sudri, a former Shas spokesman who is still intimately connected to the Yosef family, was recently hired by Netanyahu as a political adviser.
If it can hammer out economic policy issues, a Likud-led government would be ideal for Shas. Shas's constituency has traditionally been right-wing. And the Likud has traditionally been pro-religious. That beats sitting in a government with Meretz from Shas's perspective.
It remains to be seen whether Livni will cave in to Shas's demand for a NIS 1 billion addition to child allotments. So far she has refused to add more than NIS 650m. But what is NIS 350m?
Either way, though, Shas wins: Its demands are met, or it chooses not to capitulate, confident that, one way or another, it will be back in the government soon.
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