Sharon, the old warrior, still dominates Israeli
politics
By Patrick Seale
It is my unfortunate duty to report that Ariel Sharon, the blood-stained Israeli leader
whom most Arabs consider the devil-incarnate, is probably stronger today than at any time
in his long political career.
1- His brutal military campaign to crush the intifada, root out Palestinian activists and
destroy the Palestinian Authority has won overwhelming support from an Israeli public,
traumatized by Palestinian suicide bombings.
2- By a skillful (and lying) propaganda campaign, Sharon has managed to persuade much of
the Israeli public, as well as the American Congress and administration, that the
Palestinian President Yasser Arafat is personally involved in terror, that he is unwilling
to make peace, and that his hopelessly corrupt Palestinian Authority needs to be
thoroughly reformed.
Accordingly, Sharon argues, no negotiations can be held with Arafat. He must be
marginalized, and if possible removed from the scene altogether.
3- Last week, Sharon suffered what looked, at first glance, like a defeat at the hands of
his rival, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Against Sharon’s declared
wishes, the Likud central committee approved a Netanyahu proposal rejecting the
establishment of a Palestinian state. Although Sharon lost the vote he has, paradoxically,
emerged stronger.
Netanyahu has painted himself into a far-right corner together with extremist messianic
and Revisionist groups preaching the control and settlement of the entire “Land of
Israel.” By doing so, he has performed the incredible feat of making Sharon look like
a moderate, even though everyone knows that Sharon refuses to remove a single settlement
and that the crippled Palestinian “state” he envisages on some 40 percent of the
West Bank would find no Palestinian takers. Although Sharon lost a skirmish with
Netanyahu, he seems to have won the struggle for control of his party and could well be
the Likud’s candidate for prime minister at the next elections.
4-Sharon has also emerged triumphant from the challenge posed by two of his coalition
partners Shas (17 Knesset seats) and United Torah Judaism (five seats). In the Knesset
earlier this week, these two ultra-Orthodox parties voted against the government’s
emergency economic package, on the grounds that poor oriental Jews, whom they claim to
represent, will be hard- hit by the proposed cuts in social welfare payments.
Sharon’s immediate response was to sack the Shas ministers and United Torah Judaism
deputy ministers from his government. On Wednesday night, the Knesset approved
Sharon’s austerity package. If Shas come crawling back, it will have been weakened
and humiliated. If it stays out, Sharon could make up some of the lost ground by bringing
the anti-Orthodox secular Shinui Party (with its six Knesset seats) into his government.
In the absence of Shas, the Labor Party would also be happier in
the coalition.
For the moment Sharon is in no danger. His popularity is running high across the whole
political spectrum. Even without Shas and United Torah Judaism, he would still have a
small majority in the 120-member Knesset. If Shinui were to join the government, his
majority would be respectable. Only if the Labor Party (with its 24 Knesset seats) were to
quit the coalition, would Sharon’s government be vulnerable, raising the prospect of
early elections. But, for the moment, this seems highly unlikely.
Shimon Peres, the veteran Labor politician, is approaching 18. He knows he has only
another year or two in
politics. He is therefore extremely reluctant to give up his job as foreign minister. He
justifies his presence in the government by arguing that he can best influence Sharon from
the “inside,” and save the moribund 1993 Oslo Accords, which he negotiated.
Binyamin “Fuad” Ben-Eliezer, now Labor Party leader, is also extremely reluctant
to take the party out of the government and lose his Defense Ministry portfolio. Apart
from Peres and Ben-Eliezer, other Labor ministers in the government are pale,
insignificant figures who, if they resigned, might not be re-elected. They, too, cling to
their government posts.
The divided and demoralized Labor Party is in a pathetic state. It is in no position to
offer the electorate a clear alternative to Sharon’s agenda. Like Sharon, Ben-Eliezer
does not believe a deal can be struck with Arafat.
The Labor Party heavyweights Haim Ramon, Avraham Burg, Shlomo Ben Ami and Yossi Beilin
are all outside the government and are, in their different ways, maneuvring to oust
Ben-Eliezer from the leadership and take his place. Ben-Eliezer’s immediate priority,
therefore, is to fight off these challenges to his position.
For the moment, Haim Ramon looks like the most serious challenger. He advocates an
immediate unilateral Israel withdrawal from about 80 percent of the West Bank, retaining
control of the remaining 20 percent until the final status of the territories is agreed.
Such a unilateral withdrawal would mean dismantling many small settlements and resettling
their inhabitants about 5 percent of the 210,000 settlers in other settlement
blocks. Many Israelis on the left like the idea of disengagement and separation from the
Palestinians.
But Ramon faces several obstacles. To succeed, he would first have to remove Ben-Eliezer
as Labor Party leader. But even if he managed to do so, he could still not win approval
for his ideas from the present Knesset. Moreover, as a former head of the Histadrut, the
Labor Federation, Ramon has a problematic history. Many rank-and-file members of the Labor
Party are bitter at the way he seized control of the Histadrut, and weakened it, turning
it into a trade union rather than an integral part of the Labor movement. Its former
membership of 1.5 million members has shrunk to 450,000. Many would say that he
“stole” it from the Labor Party. To block Ramon, Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg is
backing Ben-Eliezer.
Another potential Labor leader, Shlomo Ben Ami, who was minister for public security and
then foreign minister in Ehud Barak’s government, also faces a problem. A committee
is investigating the role he played as minister for public security when, in October 2000,
in the early weeks of the intifada, Israeli police shot dead 13 Israeli Arabs.
If he is formally charged with responsibility for the deaths, he will not be well placed
to fight for the Labor Party leadership. Ominously, the investigating committee has
advised him to take a lawyer. In any event, he has announced that he will resign from the
Knesset if the Labor Party does not leave the coalition by July.
Yossi Beilin, a former minister of justice in Barak’s government and a leading
“dove,” is neither a minister nor a member of the Knesset, but rather a sort of
“semi-prophet” on the left of the Labor Party. He calls for an Israeli
withdrawal from the Occupied Territories and the creation of a Palestinian state, and he
has bitterly attacked Peres and Ben-Eliezer for not quitting Sharon’s coalition
government. He is also one of the few who still believes that Arafat is the Palestinian
leader with whom Israel should negotiate. Beilin’s argument is that, whatever the
politicians may say, a vast majority of Israelis still believe in peace and accept the
Saudi initiative (of full peace for full withdrawal).
Beilin’s radical trajectory has already taken him halfway out of the Labor Party. He
has said he will leave the party and create his own movement if Ben-Eliezer is
chosen as candidate for prime minister at the next elections.
Some gloomy conclusions follow from this analysis of the Israeli political scene. The
United States says it wants a two-state solution, but does nothing to implement it. The
proposed international conference seems to be receding over the horizon. The crucial
questions of borders, settlements, Jerusalem and Palestinian statehood are not being
addressed. Instead, the Israeli occupation becomes daily more entrenched.
Meanwhile, President George W. Bush’s obsession with “terrorism” knows no
bounds. More seriously, he continues to refuse to recognize that the “roots of
terror” lie in the policies of the US and its Israeli ally. Patrick Seale is the author of Assad (1988), the biography of
the late Syrian President Hafez Assad. He wrote this commentary for The Daily Star
Copyright © The Daily Star |
