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Barak faces showdown in parliament over Syria

JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak faced a showdown in parliament on Wednesday on a bill that has been called a potential kiss of death both to peacemaking with Syria and to his own government.

Underscoring the challenge to Barak, violence flared early on Wednesday in southern Lebanon, where a bomb planted by Hizbollah guerrillas killed five pro-Israeli militiamen.

The bill would require 51 percent of all eligible voters to approve a referendum on a peace treaty with Syria.

In what was widely seen as the most serious coalition crisis since Barak took office, the Israeli leader's key partner the ultra-Orthodox Shas party said it would vote en masse for the bill, sponsored by rightist Likud legislator Silvan Shalom.

"The decision of (Shas spiritual leader) Rabbi Ovadia Yosef's is to support the law, and therefore all 17 of our members, ministers and legislators alike, will be voting with Silvan Shalom," Shas spokesman Itzik Sudri said.

Shas's support was critical to Barak's majority in the 120-member house. Analysts said other right-leaning partners in Barak's patchwork coalition would also line up against him, giving Likud a potential winning majority of 62 votes.

Instead of the simple majority presently needed to ratify peace moves under the as-yet untried referendum plan, the bill would require a much-larger "special majority" exceeding 50 percent of all registered voters, whether they voted or not.

Moderates have blasted the measure as patently racist, noting that hawks advocated it in the past as a means to assure that the votes of Israel's Arab minority would not hold the balance in a decision to give up occupied land for peace.

But Shalom, who has made no secret of plans to seek his party's nomination for prime minister in coming years, said the law reflected the gravity of a decision to cede the strategic plateau, captured from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war.

Cabinet ministers have said a loss in a referendum would spell the end of the Barak government, which came to power in July on pledges to make every effort to nail down peace treaties with the Palestinians, Syria and Lebanon.

Peace hopes have since paled, as talks with the Palestinians stalled in the shadow of the December resumption of Israeli-Syria negotiations.

Within weeks, the discussions with Damascus also ran aground, placed in limbo over Barak's rejection of a Syrian demand Israel commit to ceding the whole of the Golan.

U.S. President Bill Clinton, who keenly desires to shepherd at least one Arab-Israeli treaty to completion before leaving office in January, said on Tuesday he was "not throwing in the towel" over the Middle East peace process.

But Clinton's dogged optimism was lost on many Israelis, who have urged Barak to abandon peace overtures to Syria in response to tough anti-Israeli talk by Damascus and a recent rise in attacks by guerrillas fighting Israeli troops in Lebanon.-Reuters