http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/644052.html By Avirama Golan, Haaretz Correspondent
Amir Peretz' victory gives two citizens, who are not members of the Labor Party, just cause for concern: Benjamin Netanyahu (Likud) and Eli Yishai (Shas).
Peretz' call to those who "feel that they do not stand a chance of becoming an integral part of Israeli society" threatens both of them. Beneath the surface, this heralds the beginning of the end of the rule of sectors.
"Circumstances are now similar to those that faced Israeli society in 1975, when sociology shifted. The political expression of that shift took place only two years later," says Professor Daniel Gutwein, an expert in the field of social history at the University of Haifa.
"Since 1977, the Likud has focused on privatizing the welfare state and, in fact, destroying it. Then, there was an insufficient number of wealthy individuals to purchase everything that was privatized, and the Likud promoted the creation of sectors. In 1996, Netanyahu invited them into his fold, like Begin before him, under an umbrella called the 'coalition of the disenfranchised.'
According to Gutwein, the significant shift followed the emergence of a new wealthy elite in Israel. The disintegration of the welfare state and the transfer of the lion's share of the nation's resources to the settlements made the oligarchy of sectors superfluous.
"That is how the sociology shifted: loci of power in the parties were paralyzed, the connection between capital and government crossed the lines of both major parties, and new special interest groups and associations were formed between groups that felt threatened and injured, and the oligarchy connected with the government."
In light of these statements, the influence of right-wing economic policy on broad sectors of the population, including traditional, middle-class Labor voters and citizens of the geographic and socio-cultural periphery, invited by the Likud and Shas to gather under the banner of hatred of the powerful, becomes clear.
The Likud lost its power base in sectors of the population, and Labor, punished in 1977 by the very public that should have been its power base (as a social-democratic party, at least in name), chose to join the Likud and blur the narrow difference in policy between the parties.
Gripped by anxiety regarding the chance that Peretz might lead the opposition battle for the economy and society to successfully overturn the partisan pyramid, Haim Ramon led the "Big Bang" engulfment of Labor by Likud.
Today, after Peretz opened the gates of the Left to the entire public, without surrendering an ounce of his dovish political platform - the countdown to a new political turnabout has begun.