ELECTION STALEMATE
A swelling of grassroots activism, culminating in the Earth Day celebra-tions that swept America in 1970, led to the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. President Nixon had little choice but to listen to the pulse of the nation and create a new superagency.[1] In New Zealand, the creation of an independent Ministry of the Environment in 1986 was part of a series of wholesale reforms by the Labour Party, prom-ised in their election campaign two years earlier.[2] The establishment of Israel's Environmental Ministry, however, was a fluke. If the 1988 elections had not ended in a deadlock, the environment might still lack Cabinet-level representation today.
Prior to the elections, the Environmental Protection Service continued to limp along as part of the Ministry of the Interior. Under the adminis-tration of successive religious Interior Ministers, most recently from the ultraorthodox Sephardic Shas party, the Service's future became increas-ingly precarious. Its Director, Uri Marinov, had grown bolder and less diplomatic over the years. He was no longer willing to kowtow to Ariyeh Deri, the upstart party founder who was at first Director General and later Minister of the Interior. When Deri directed him to funnel monies desig-nated for environmental activities to Shas-affiliated religious institutions, Marinov went to the police to complain. Relations that had never been good reached a new nadir. Deri disconnected Marinov's phone and telex machine. Marinov decided to leave government service if things did not change quickly.[3]
Deliverance came from the unanticipated electoral stalemate. As the re-sults of the elections came in, it became clear that neither the Labor nor the Likud party would be able to form a majority government. Once again, Israel's two large political blocs would have to find a way to compromise and share power in a “national unity government.” The principle that drove the negotiations was an equal number of Ministerial posts for Likud and Labor leaders, to ensure a balanced Cabinet. But after all the minority parties had been rationed their portfolios, there was an odd number of Ministries left.
The odd man out was Ronni Miloh, a very bright young politician who often played the role of aggressive hatchet man for the (right-wing) Likud Party. An attorney who had spent all his life in the sophisticated Tel Aviv milieu, Miloh was perfectly comfortable among leftists and in 1994 was elected mayor of Israel's most liberal city. He had been a Likud activist in university politics and for many years remained steadfastly loyal to the
Marinov had thought about this from the time election results came in. Together with his legal advisor, Ruth Rotenberg, he prepared an entire plan for an Environmental Ministry, including drafts of all the requisite government decisions for establishing it. Aware of the weakness of politi-cians for homage, Marinov even found room for spacious Ministerial chambers, giving up his own office in the existing Environmental Protection Service. As negotiations for establishing the government dragged on, Marinov had time to refine the proposal and consider who would be its best advocate. He gambled on Miloh, who had been sympa-thetic to environmental issues in the past.[4] It was a prescient choice.
A smiling Miloh appeared on Israeli television on the morning of December 25, 1988. He described the dreidel spin of one of Israel's crazi-est all-night coalitional marathons. At one o'clock in the morning he was going to be Minister of Transportation; then later in the negotiations he was moved to Tourism; then that job was snatched by someone else.[5] At six in the morning, he was to be Minister without portfolio. Rumor had it that the possibility of creating a Ministry of Sports was suggested as a pos-sible area of jurisdiction. It was then that Miloh pulled out Marinov's plan and said, “I want to be Minister of the Environment.” Yitzhak Shamir had already been lobbied intensively on the issue by Josef Tamir, who now served as head of Life and Environment—Israel's umbrella group for en-vironmental organizations. He was very supportive of the idea.[6] It was the easiest solution, and everyone was very tired. Under these inauspicious and somewhat random circumstances, the Ministry of the Environment was born. It was long overdue. Some 125 nations had already created in-dependent environmental bureaucracies.[7]
Miloh's brief tenure at the Ministry (see Figure 24) is remembered fa-vorably for several reasons, one of which was the high-minded profes-sional nature of his selection of personnel. His first act as Minister was to retain Marinov's services as Director General. Other key appointments, like that of Professor Yoram Avnimelech as Ministry Chief Scientist, in-volved experts who were at odds with Likud positions. The choices raised eyebrows in his own party. Miloh recalls that when he told Yitzhak Shamir that he intended to appoint Marinov as his Director General, Shamir questioned the wisdom of the move, as he had heard that Marinov held leftist views. Miloh told Shamir that whatever Marinov's politics