Electoral reform may be on hold

JERUSALEM -- Electoral reform in Israel will have to take a back seat to the peace process.

This is the prediction of political observers in Jerusalem who surveyed the likely legislative scenarios following the Camp David summit.

Nevertheless, legislators last week gave preliminary approval to a bill that would cancel the current law that provided for the direct election of the prime minister. But observers believe that the bill will be put on hold.

The direct election law was first implemented for the 1996 election, which brought former Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu to power.

One of the bill's sponsors, Meretz legislator Naomi Hazan, charged that the current electoral system gives far too much political power to the smaller parties.

The Beilin-Landau bill is due for further consideration by November.

But by then, say observers, the political situation will probably have undergone cataclysmic changes in the wake of the Camp David summit. And even if the summit fails, observers say there will be other attempts to revive peace talks before President Clinton leaves office in January.

The following are the possible scenarios:

* Prime Minister Ehud Barak returns with an agreement, submits it to the Knesset and asks the House to pass legislation to hold a national referendum on the peace deal.

* The Knesset agrees to do this. Barak wins the referendum; his government stays in office; the parties of the coalition -- which, by then, may well have grown larger again -- consider at a leisurely pace their positions on electoral reform.

* The Knesset refuses to hold a referendum. Barak resigns and calls an election in which the key issue is the agreement he brought home. That election, inevitably -- because there has been no time to reform the law -- is held under the present electoral system, which involves separate votes for the prime minister and the Knesset.

Again, whether Barak wins or loses the election, the new government coalition returns at its leisure to take up the electoral reform question. The additional experience of a third election under the direct voting system would help determine whether to maintain the system or revert to the previous system, as the reformers advocate.