Fringe Parties Hope to Woo Israel Voters

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Jerusalem -- A driver speeding past two dozen cyclists from the pro-marijuana Green Leaf Party shouts, "Hey, you giving out free samples?" A bus driver gives a wave and a honk.

 

The cyclists, wearing T-shirts emblazoned with a marijuana leaf, pedaled through the city to draw attention to one of their many tenets, ditching cars for bicycles. It was part election campaign, part environmental activism and part lark.

 

A month before parliamentary elections, Green Leaf is among several fringe parties competing for the protest vote from Israelis unwilling to choose hardliners but frustrated by dovish parties after more than two years of fighting with the Palestinians.

 

They woo voters with campaigns on the weakened economy, social ills and the environment, not plans for peace.

 

Green Leaf just missed the 1.5 percent of the vote needed to enter parliament in 1999, but polls predict it might get two of 120 seats in the parliament, or Knesset, this time. The party champions legalizing marijuana and the right to hold all-night dance parties without interference from police making drug busts.

 

Fringe movements give voters a way out of agonizing choices, said Shmuel Sandler, a political science professor at Tel Aviv University.

 

"People are very disappointed by the peace process, and it's sort of an escape," Sandler said. "They are frustrated with the left, but they're not going to vote for the right, so this is a nice way of getting out of this dilemma."

 

Among the protest parties is the Men's Rights in the Family Party, which advocates strengthening a man's say in child custody battles and decisions over abortions.

 

Yisrael Acheret, or Another Israel, is led by a 26-year-old law student who wants to replace politicians with academics, business people and professionals.

 

The group also wants to end subsidies for ultra-Orthodox Jews, who are exempt from military service and often depend on state handouts as they devote their lives to seminary study, and Jewish settlers.

 

The momentum, for now, is with Green Leaf.

 

Biking through Jerusalem, Green Leaf activists handed stickers to cheering motorists. Stopping at a gas station, they unfurled a pot-leaf banner near a police jeep, and one cyclist got a high-five from a policewoman.

 

The party's chairman, Boaz Wachtel, 44, is no typical hippie: He was the assistant military attache at the Israeli embassy in Washington in the 1980s, and served on a team of Israeli representatives to former President Ronald Reagan's space-based anti-missile shield program.

 

Wachtel, also a longtime proponent of alternative drug-abuse treatments, said the group of activists only reluctantly entered politics. "We're not politicians by choice, but out of necessity. In order to change things we had to jump into the political swamp in Israel."

 

His desk at the party's Tel Aviv headquarters is covered with newspapers, including a weekend magazine with a photo of him with a green mint leaf stuck to his forehead. Posters on the wall have the slogan "ballot to freedom" with illustrations of pot leaves and hearts.

 

Wachtel believes that so-called soft drugs like marijuana are not gateways to hard drugs like cocaine; such addiction, he said, is the outcome of larger social problems poverty, violence and sexual abuse.

 

He says legalizing cannabis would free up money and time for the government to treat hardcore drug addicts and fight more important problems like violent crime.

 

The Green Leaf headquarters is near Tel Aviv's cafe and shop-lined Sheinkin Street, the heartland of Israel's anti- establishment youth culture, which feeds much of the support for the smaller parties.

 

Alegria Sabag, 19, said Green Leaf will speak up for young Israelis, especially on issues of education. Sabag has no money to go to college, and is resentful that young Israelis have to serve in the military but get little financial assistance for school.

 

"Green Leaf represents the young voice," she said, at work in a dance-music filled clothing store.

 

Note: Pro-Marijuana Party, and Host of Other Groups, Hoping to Get Into Israel's Knesset.

 

Source: Associated Press

Published: January 1, 2003