5765 will be Sharon’s year

Friday, September 17, 2004

This year 5765 will be the year of Sharon, no matter what he does. If he goes ahead with the disengagement – technically, he does not even have to go to the Knesset with the decision, all he has to do is set a date for the army to leave – meaning if he uses all his political willpower and goes over the heads of his party and against all his former friends and colleagues on the right, it will be his year. But if he does not go ahead with the disengagement, for whatever reason, he has set in motion expectations that reach deep into Israeli society, and internationally, expectations that could result in dramatic developments ranging from international frustration leading to sanctions to domestic frustration leading to pressure for new elections – and possibly a new political configuration.

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

hen he was elected last year, he appeared to be the most politically powerful prime minister since David Ben Gurion, able to form several alternative governments based on alternative coalitions. But since then, his very daring in announcing the disengagement plan, his last ditch effort to save as many of the Jewish settlements of Judea and Samaria as possible by sacrificing Gaza’s settlements and a handful in the northern West Bank, has become a petard on which he was hoisted. He has no political allies – except perhaps Shimon Peres, who is also more or less on his own in his party. He has no natural constituency – the setters are obviously no longer his, his popularity in the Haredi world, which always admired his military prowess (and his delivery or political plums to them) has plummeted because of the government’s anti-welfare policies, and obviously, nobody on the Left is particularly enthusiastic about supporting his moves, precisely because as is so typical of Sharon, even the Israeli step toward Palestinian independence, at least in Gaza, is being done with a deliberate unilateralism that can’t help but be brutal.

Ironically, Sharon appears weak, because of his shrunken coalition. But while everyone was watching the attacks on him, the way is coalition seems so fragile, counting the votes for upcoming budget votes that begin in the Knesset next month, at the end of the month-long holidays, he finessed his government (at least its security cabinet, numbering 10 members instead of the 22 of the full cabinet) into agreeing to compensation for settlers who want to leave early – and punitive measures for those who refuse to leave the settlements designated for evacuation. And he has ordered the army to make the preparations for an evacuation. These are seemingly technical matters, and certainly hardly affect public consciousness the way the highly organized settlers and their supporters do.

But these small technical steps are adding up – and each time Education Minister Limor Livnat goes on TV to say that technically the government has not decided on any evacuations, only on preparations, it sounds like she’s going through motions that even she knows are becoming ever more meaningless; or when Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu issues his occasional pronouncements on military-diplomatic-political matters, like his sudden support for a referendum on the disengagement, it is transparently meant to assuage the Rightist flanks of the Likud, which have been betrayed by Sharon. Netanyahu, by the way, suggests the referendum be ‘in favor or opposed to the government’s decision,’ which as Livnat and others keep pointing out, is not to disengage but to prepare for it. The smart money says Netanyahu actually would like Sharon to execute the disengagement, so that when Netanyahu becomes prime minister, he won’t have to dirty his hands with it. But that assumes Netanyahu will end up the next prime minister – and while that might be true if it is entirely a matter of the Likud deciding, the polls consistently show that Netanyahu doesn’t break through the 40 percent approval rating for prime minister if general elections were held. Ironically, the only politicians who do are Sharon – and Shimon Peres.

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