The man alone

Tuesday, October 26, 2004

few hours before the vote in the Knesset, now expected to be 65 in favor of disengagement and 55 against – a large enough majority for Sharon to continue rejecting the referendum being demanded by disengagement opponents – the conventional wisdom is that Sharon is so politically drained, so bereft of allies, that the countdown after the vote today is not to the disengagement but to his fall.

The settlers, who began laying siege to the Knesset this morning by busing in thousands of schoolchildren to the capital (calling the school strike throughout the Jewish settlements ‘a lesson in civics’), trying to prevent MKs from reaching the House, are beginning to use the refrain that Sharon’s victory was because of Leftist (implying Arab) votes, and therefore is somehow illegitimate.

Indeed, the coincidence of the vote today in the Knesset and Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination (according to the Hebrew calendar) is nearly surrealistic; the same slogans that were heard against Rabin are being recited by the settlers and their supporters. But there is something else at play. Nobody ever accused Yitzhak Rabin of being a settler ally. But Sharon has made a political U-turn on a seemingly unimaginable scale. He has gone from being the settlement movement’s most important patron to using language about the demographic threat to Israel’s Jewish majority and therefore the state’s democracy, language that is more familiar from Peace Now rallies than from Likud prime ministers. True, he quoted Menachem Begin when he described some among the settlers as having a ‘messianic complex’ instead of coming up with the phrase on his own, but he wrote the speech by himself, without any drafts from any of his advisors and assistants, and it was full of unusual (for Sharon) emotional appeals.

o, when Rabin was termed a traitor by Rightists, it was an almost abstract concept, a reference to treason against the state. Today, when the settlers call Sharon a traitor, they are referring to someone they feel has turned his back on them, and aligned with their greatest enemies (other than Arabs) – ‘the Left.’ Not that the Left is embracing the ‘new Sharon.’ True, Shimon Peres said that Sharon ‘looked reality in the eye’ and understood how illogical it is for Israel to maintain the settlements in Gaza – and most of Judea and Samaria. But there is profound suspicion of Sharon lurking on the Left because of his history and most recently because of his consigliore lawyer Dov Weisglass who seemed to spill the beans earlier this month when he told Haaretz that the entire disengagement plan was meant to prevent implementation of the roadmap and a a Palestinian state ‘until the Palestinians turn into Finns.’

Yet Sharon’s speech last night made not a single concession to the Right. There was no explanation of the disengagement as a way to hold onto the West Bank. There was also no promise that the disengagement would be a one-time event. Indeed, instead, he called it a ‘gateway to a new hope’ and seemed to admit that despite everything he has said until now, it could lead to a renewed dialogue with Palestinians. There was no emphasis of the disengagement as unilateral, as a punishment for the Palestinians (which is how he was explaining disengagement as recently as the New Year holidays two months ago), or as a way to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. In fact, defending himself against accusations that he had betrayed voters, Sharon pointed out correctly that even before the elections he had made clear he favored a Palestinian state. And on one of the rare moments when he ceased reading from the page and spoke extemporaneously, he admitted something that had been in the realm of political gossip for years – that in 1988 he suggested to then-premier Yitzhak Shamir (whose family this week asked the Knesset for a budget to have the 89-year-old former premier hospitalized in an old-aged home with 24-hour medical attendance) that Israel propose dividing the country ‘otherwise we’ll be pushed back to the 1967 lines.’ Sharon did not answer Yahad MK Yossi Sarid, who called out from the floor, ‘so how many new settlements did you build since then?’

All the brouhaha over the vote this evening has relegated other issues to the back pages, almost off the media radar entirely. For example, the army conducted a major operation in Khan Yunis over the past couple of days, to try to stop mortar fire into the Gush Katif settlements. At least 15 Palestinians were killed and even the army admitted that not all were armed men. Some on the extra-parliamentary Left accused the army (and by implication Sharon and Mofaz) of trying to pander to the settlers. The settlers say the army has never done enough to protect them. Mofaz said the army would continue taking action to prevent Palestinian attacks on the settlements, through the disengagement. Israeli policy as enunciated by Sharon and Mofaz is for the army to take whatever action necessary to prevent Palestinian attacks on the disengagement as it takes place. That presumably means a major operation inside Gaza when the actual withdrawal happens – sometime in the summer of 2005, according to the current version of the plan.

n Ramallah, Yasser Arafat was resting after an endoscope procedure, to examine his esophagus and stomach, and which Arafat spokesmen said turned up nothing unusual, saying that reports of his failing healthy are greatly exaggerated. The Israelis were sticking to their assessment that he is sicker than Arafat’s aides are admitting – with reports of a dramatically lowered white cell count in his blood. But the Israelis also admit that Arafat has long since proven he has more lives than a cat. The question is how many lives he has left. In any case, Israel has told the Palestinian Authority that it will not do anything to prevent Arafat from being taken to hospital.

And two young Jewish settler families who yesterday illegally squatted in a Bethlehem building near Rachel’s Tomb were removed this morning by the army.

Today's Situation || Yesterday's Situation