On the eve of New Year’s Eve

Tuesday, September 14, 2004

Last night, however, he did speak out, and surprise, surprise, he contradicted what his father was saying, at almost the exact same time, to interviewers from the press. Omri was heard telling a gathering of Likud activists that ‘there is no option to expel Arafat,’ and that expelling Arafat would be ‘foolish,’ while his father was telling interviewers from the print press that Israel would expel Arafat from the territories, and that it was merely a matter of timing. Nobody appeared to have asked when would be an appropriate time.

On the matter of timing, the latest proposal apparently meant to stall the Sharon disengagement plan is a sudden revival of the national referendum idea, something that Sharon actually considered a few months ago, and was dissuaded when he learned just how complicated it would be to legislate.

Woman Crucified # 13 by Silvia Rosenberg, mixed media on recycled paper, 20x30 cm.

Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu – whose father recently signed a public letter calling the evacuation of settlements ‘a crime against humanity’ – suddenly came out in favor of a national referendum. Netanyahu is caught between a rock and a hard place. He does not believe in unilateral withdrawal nor a Palestinian state (at least not until there are guarantees the Palestinian state would be a Jeffersonian democracy), but as finance minister he knows that progress in the political process is crucial for the state’s economy. Earlier this year he put up resistance to the disengagement idea, but then compromised with Sharon on a drawn out schedule beginning next March, a timetable that Sharon quite promptly threw out, advancing all the legislation necessary for evacuation to by the end of this year.

Netanyahu’s call for a referendum aligns him with the National Religious Party’s Zevulun Orlev, who won a smashing victory over the NRP chairman Effi Eitam last night, when the NRP’s central committee voted by a 66 percent majority to remain in the government until the withdrawal from the 21 settlements of Gaza and four northern West Bank settlements begins. Orlev tacked on the condition of a referendum for remaining in the government but he doesn’t really want a referendum, knowing, as everyone does, that the vast majority of Israelis are in favor of not only the disengagement as Sharon has proposed it, but of more withdrawals from isolated settlements in the West Bank. But Orlev will remain in the government – even though the inner security cabinet is slated today to approve the compensation plan for the settlers – in the hope that some deus ex machina will intervene to prevent any withdrawal, or as he explained, the NRP will be able ‘to influence’ the government decisions.

Netanyahu said that even without the referendum, he would vote yes in the various disengagement votes in the government and Knesset. But he argued strenuously in favor of a snap referendum – six weeks, he says, should be enough to prepare for it, though judging by the reactions to the idea in the political arena, it could take six months to draft legislation for a referendum. The Right is already insisting needs a ‘special’ majority, as transparent an effort to neutralize the Israeli-Arab vote, as Netanyahu’s proposal was a transparent attempt to throw Sharon and his schedule off balance. Sharon didn’t miss a beat in response, telling the interviewers that the proposals now for a referendum are an attempt to delay the disengagement and that he does not intend to postpone his plan by a single day. He didn't mention that Netanyahu proposed a vote yes or no on what the govenrment decided, when it is not at all clear what exactly the government decided -- to disengage from Gasa or just set a date (as Netanyahu claims) to vote on disengagement. And ironically, as head of the opposition in 1994, Netanyahu was the leading spokesman against the referendum that then-premier Yitzhak Rabin promised if he reached a peace agreement with the Syrians.

In other developments: the High Court of Justice threw out a petition by Moshe Zar, one of the largest Jewish land holders in the West Bank, against the removal of an outpost on land he owns, perhaps paving the way for an attempt to evacuate the outpost, which was named after Zar’s son, Gilad, the northern West Bank civilian security officer for the settlements in the area, killed in a deliberate ambush for him. Also today, a suicide bomber on a bicycle killed himself and wounded three soldiers near the Qalqiliyah checkpoint; the U.S. is reported by Haaretz to be ready to help pay for the relocation of army bases from the West Bank into Israel.

And with 20,000 local authorities workers not getting their salaries, on the eve of the holiday there is talk about people going hungry in Israel, which Netanyahu has been working to transform from a welfare-state with socialist roots into a neo-Thatcherite economy where the poor are blamed for their situation.

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