[lbo-talk] Israeli Politics in a Post-Sharon Era

[Bryan Atinsky]

*Israeli Politics in a Post-Sharon Era
*
Written by: Michael Warschawski (co-founder of the Alternative 
Information Center)
Date: Monday, 09 January 2006
**

http://alternativenews.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=354&Itemid=1&lang=ISO-8859-1

Reading the local and international media, one gets the feeling that the 
brain-hemorrhage which pushed Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon out of 
politics will have almost the same effect as those two bullets which ten 
years ago ended the life of his friend and predecessor, Yitzchak Rabin - 
the death of the peace process.

The assassination of Rabin ended the Oslo Process, the stroke of Ariel 
Sharon may end, so are we told, current Israeli advancements towards an 
Israeli-Palestinian peace, a trend which started with Israel’s 
redeployment from the Gaza Strip and the dismantling of several small 
settlements. Even a few Palestinian officials expressed concern about 
the political future without Ariel Sharon.

This strongly entrenched evaluation could not be further from the truth. 
Sharon was not and never claimed to be, even in the last few years, a 
man of peace. Sharon never intended to reopen negotiations with the 
Palestinian leadership, let alone reach a “fair compromise” capable of 
ending this century old conflict.

On the contrary: any honest evaluation of Sharon’s many speeches and 
interviews over the past thirty five years-- and especially since he 
became Prime Minister in 2001-- reveals an extremely consistent and 
coherent political vision, which explicitly rejects the very possibility 
of peace between Israel and the Arabs. In fact, Sharon is the only 
Israeli leader, with the exception of David Ben Gurion, to embrace a 
holistic political vision-- a global and long-term national project-- 
which can be summarized in four points:

1) - The war of 1948 has not ended and the final borders of Israel 
should not be fixed, at least for the next fifty (sic) years;

2) - For the next fifty years, Israel’s priority is to create Jewish 
continuity from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan river through a 
never ending settlement drive;

3) - In order to maintain the demographically Jewish nature of Israel, 
the Palestinians are to be excluded from the State through their 
expulsion (“Jordan is the Palestinian State”) or their enclosure within 
“Indian reservations” (Cantons) which, if they want, can be labeled a 
“Palestinian State.”

4) - No Arab will ever (at least in the next fifty years) make peace 
with Israel, and since we don’t and will not have a partner, the 
creation of this “Palestinian State” and the establishment of both its 
borders and prerogatives will be unilaterally decided upon by the 
government of Israel.

Israel’s “unilateral redeployment from the Gaza Strip” was supposed to 
be the first step in this long-term strategic plan. After the next 
elections, Sharon intended to take further *unilateral i*nitiatives: a 
determined settlement’s drive along with withdrawals from areas with a 
high concentration of Palestinians.

Indeed Sharon had a plan. But it would be ludicrous to call it a “peace 
plan.” It was supposed to be an Israeli plan, unilaterally imposed on 
the Palestinian people. With the end of the Sharon era, one can 
legitimately ask whether this plan will continue to represent Israel’s 
strategic framework.

Though Sharon’s disappearance from the Israeli political scene is, by no 
means, the end of any kind of renewed peace process, it doesn’t mean 
that, at the present political juncture, Sharon’s illness should be 
reduced to a minor incident. It is, in fact, a real earthquake: Not 
since the days of David Ben Gurion has one person so monopolized the 
Israeli political scene or garnered such a huge majority of the vote 
(following the pathetic failure of Ehud Barak).

Sharon was the only leader able to leave his party, the Likud, and only 
a few weeks later establish a party – Kadima – which was predicted to 
receive more votes than the Likud and the Labor party together. For a 
majority of Israelis, Sharon was the man who embodied the new consensus 
based on security and what they believed to be “unilateral peace 
initiatives.” The problem of Kadima is that it is a one-man party, a 
structure aimed to give Ariel Sharon-- and only Ariel Sharon-- the means 
to implement his policy; it has no institutions, it has no program, and 
without Sharon, it is nothing but a collection of deserters from the 
rest of Israeli politics - from the far-right to left Zionism.

Given the timing of the next elections, which are set to be held at the 
end of March, Kadima’s leadership has little time to shape a political 
profile and leadership team able to convince the Israeli voters that it 
has the capacity to implement Sharon’s policy without Sharon. Some of 
Kadima’s leaders are already secretly negotiating their return to the 
various parties from which they came, which makes both Benjamin 
Netanyahu and Amir Peretz happy. But both Peretz and Netanyahu will have 
to reshape their political platform in order to regain the masses of 
voters who intended to support Ariel Sharon in the coming elections. 
This is no easy task.

In short, the Israeli political scene is in an unprecedented state of 
turmoil, and no one dares to predict what the situation will be the day 
after the elections: who will form the government, what the coalition 
will look like, or even who will belong to which party.

Should the Palestinian people be happy about such a mess? Not 
necessarily. As a Palestinian spokesperson said few days ago: “when an 
Israeli Prime minister doesn’t know what to do next, he always has the 
option of strengthening the repression against the Palestinian people…”

Of course, there is another reason to be sad: Ariel Sharon will be one 
of the many war criminals who died without having been brought to an 
international court of justice; his victims will not see him judged for 
the crimes he committed over the last fifty years.

-- 
Bryan Atinsky
Editor, News from Within
e-mail: bryan at alt-info.org
Tel: (972)2-624-1159
P.O. Box 31417, Jerusalem 91313
http://www.newsfromwithin.org
http://www.alternativenews.org