Whirlpool, Big Bang, Chaos

Wednesday, October 13, 2004

The Labor Party, seemingly stabilized by the presence of octogenarian Shimon Peres at its head, is in a tizzy as former premier Ehud Barak begins his campaign to recapture the leadership and Histadrut chairman Amir Peretz gears up for his own lunge for the leadership.

The Right – from the National Religious Party rightward to National Union and possibly including the Likud ‘rebels’ if the ruling party does indeed split over the disengagement plan, is planning to form a new party alignment of all the Right wing parties. But hardline Rightist Avigdor Lieberman, the head of the National Union, is reportedly plotting to form a new Russian immigrant party, reportedly convinced he could win seats in the Knesset – while most polls now show the Russian immigrants who were so right wing when they first arrived are now dispersed across the political spectrum the same as all Israelis.

And on the Left, Yahad, formerly known as Meretz, has evaporated as an influential force under Yossi Beilin’s leadership, while the Arab political parties are under pressure from the grass roots to stop ranting and raving about the situation in the territories and start looking out for Israeli Arab interests, like rezoning to solve the housing crunch in Galilee villages.

The goddess loves -- Mixed media on paper, 50x70 cm by Silvia Rosenberg

t’s long been predicted that the inherent contradiction between Israel as a high-tech power that belongs to the global village and Israel as an ideological country driven by Biblical fantasies, would eventually lead to a ‘Big Bang’ that would redraw party lines in the highly politicized Israeli arena, particularly if and when it becomes obvious that the only way to m make political progress toward peace is to give up some if not all the territories and dismantle settlements.

But nobody ever expected it would be Ariel Sharon, as prime minister, who would detonate the ‘Big Bang,’ which Labor MK Haim Ramon has been predicting all along as a matter of moderate Likud and moderate Labor politicians (beefed up by moderates from Shinui) forming a new genuinely centrist party. But this week, the Big Bang appears to be closer than ever. Indeed, he put the date for it to begin on the calendar: October 25, the day he plans to bring his disengagement plan to the Knesset, where the headcounters say he still has a majority (though a slim one, and certainly not guaranteed) for his plan to quit Gaza and the northern West Bank.

Making a prediction about what will happen on that day in the Israeli parliament is impossible. Sharon is talking about punishing the ‘rebels,’ which only make them angrier about his betrayal of traditional Likud ideology and reconfirms – for them – that Sharon is acting ‘undemocratically’ (as if keeping several million Palestinians under Israeli control, without civil rights, so that a quarter million settlers can feel like masters of the Biblical territories, is democratic).

Labor’s Peres still wants to bring his party into the government, but the pressures inside the party as it readies for the confrontation between Barak and Peres (or Peretz) are to stay out of the coalition, while voting in favor of disengagement. And Sharon meanwhile does not appear to have a majority for the neo-Thatcherite budget devised by Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who now is waiting for Sharon to finally fall so he can take over the Likud. If he were to bring Labor into the coalition – with Shas, as is being proposed by some in his party ready to dump Shinui – it would mean busting Netanyahu’s budget, which could send the finance minister who longs to return to the Prime Minister’s Office into his natural position as leader of the ‘rebels.’

Meanwhile, the operation against Qassams in Gaza continues, with troops moving into Beit Lahiye, in northern Gaza. But the Qassams still hit Sderot. This morning, the ‘early warning’ system worked as two rockets were launched from Gaza. Loudspeakers give town residents about 25 second advance warning before a Qassam lands, just enough time to get indoors, presumably safer than getting hit by a Qassam outdoors, as happened to four residents over the last two years since the rockets became the weapon of choice for Gazan militants trying to harass Israel.

And in Hebron, Imad Qawasme, head of the Hamas in the south West Bank city, surrendered peacefully carrying a white flag to an IDF team that uncovered a secret hiding place in the home of a suspected terrorist they were arresting. Qawasme is considered the brains behind several bloody terrorist incidents in Jerusalem and in the West Bank. He’ll now face Shin Bet interrogators eager to question him about the cells operating in the area. Presumably, his peaceful surrender is meant to position him -- after a few or many yuears in Israeli prison -- as a national polticial leader for the Palestinians.

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