Stalled coalition talks

Wednesday, December 15, 2004

Meanwhile, while last night Sharon was holding onto the Interior Ministry, refusing to give it to the Labor Party, by this morning he was ready to hand it over after the Labor negotiating team walked out of the negotiations, complaining that the Likud was trying to humiliate them. Sharon is taking a risk with his own party by letting Labor have the powerful Interior Ministry, which has supreme authority over all the local authorities from cities down to villages in the country, as well as control over the population registry, meaning issues like recognition of converts, visas for foreign workers, and immigration rights for non-Jewish relatives of Israelis. Likud Agriculture Minister Yisrael Katz, who reluctantly backed Sharon’s move to bring Labor into the government – and is very popular in the Likud central committee -- expected to get the Interior Ministry as an ‘upgrade.’ His voice has yet to be heard but he no doubt has seen the headlines and is probably fuming.

But adding to Sharon’s problems is that Labor is not satisfied by the Interior Ministry. It also wants at least one of the portfolios already held by the Likud, preferably the Public Security Ministry, which Sharon is holding for Tzachi Hanegbi. Hanegbi is another very popular politician in the central committee, who was forced out of the minister’s seat earlier this year when the attorney general launched a criminal investigation into wholesale cronyism by Hanegbi when he was Environmental Affairs Minister and gave ministry jobs to at least 85 people from the central committee or their relatives.

Labor negotiators Haim Ramon and Moshe Shahal were both saying this morning that as far as they are concerned, Labor could join the government without portfolios, for the sake of the disengagement. But Sharon wants Labor to have portfolios as ‘anchors’ that will hold them in the government until November 2006. So does Shimon Peres, who already seems to be plotting – possibly with Sharon – what will be done after the disengagement.

Yet another obstacle is the state budget as formulated by Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who refuses to change it and has stepped up his public appearances to say that ‘Labor is joining us, the Likud, not the other way around,’ meaning Labor should forget any hopes it may have of making structural changes to the budget.

The conventional wisdom, of course, is that Sharon – helped by Shimon Peres of Labor – will manage to pull it all together before next Monday, when he wants to present the new government to the Knesset. But Sharon fractured, indeed smashed the political spectrum with his disengagement plan, and the unpredictable Israeli political scene has become even more volatile since he has made clear he has no intention of giving it up. On the one hand, his control over the Likud party is limited – only the threat of new elections forced the central committee to back his plan to bring Labor into the coalition. On the other hand, there is nobody who comes close to defeating him in any of the public opinion polls.

Meanwhile, on the Palestinian side, Mahmoud Abbas is also confounding the experts. Ever since he quit his job as prime minister while Yasser Arafat was alive, he was considered a weak has-been. As Arafat lay dying, Abbas was said to be a colorless pretender to the throne, and there were expectations for all out civil war in the Palestinian territories as the warring factions turned against each other. But like Sharon, Abbas is proving that patience pays off. He has been touring the Arab world, winning support from regimes that wanted nothing to do with the PLO under Arafat and meanwhile, he has been gradually making clear what he wants to do as PA president: put an end to the armed intifada, unify the various PA security services and bring the armed irregulars into those services, essentially putting an end to the phenomenon of ‘military wings’ of political parties in the PA arena.

According to reports in the international Arab press getting prominent play in the Israeli press, he also wants to replace some longstanding Arafat appointees, including two key players, PA Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath, and UN Ambassador Nasser Kidwe (Arafat’s nephew). The Israeli government is being very careful not to comment on anything Abbas is saying or doing so far, arguing that any expression of support for him coming from Jerusalem would only sour Palestinian support for him. But this morning, President Moshe Katsav spoke up about Abbas, calling the PLO chairman’s remarks about disarming the intifada, ‘commendable.’

On another front, Industry Minister Ehud Olmert heard from Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak that Egypt plans to put an end to the smuggling from Sinai into Gaza. If that were to happen, Israel would be much more amenable to giving up the so-called Philadelphi corridor between Gaza and Egypt -- to Egypt, not the Palestinians.

Egyptian Intelligence Minister Omar Suleiman is due to return to Israel and the PA to continue talks about achieving a pan-Palestinian ceasefire, training Palestinian security officers. In another sign of change, several dozen such officers were approved by Israel this week after months of postponement on the grounds that some were tainted with terrorist backgrounds. Meanwhile, more than 200 Palestinian prisoners are already on a list of prisoners due for release as part of what Israel is calling a goodwill gesture to the Egyptians in the wake of the release of Azzam Azzam from Egyptian jail. There are an estimated 7,000 Palestinians detained or jailed by Israel, and the Palestinians are planning to make mass prisoner releases a key issue on their agenda when direct talks resume with Israel as expected after the January 9th PA elections.

And Foreign Ministry Director General Ron Prosor, speaking at the Herzliya Conference, said that Israel should respond positively to Syrian overtures for a renewal of negotiations, saying that while the Assad regime ‘honestly earned the skepticism’ with which Israel regards the overtures, and even if talks prove that the Syrians only want t talk to reduce American pressure on the regime, Israel is ‘duty bound’ to take the challenge. That’s a direct contradiction of official policy as enunciated by his bosses – Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who want to see Assad shut down the Hamas and other rejectionist organizations based in Damascus. Prosor also vehemently condemned the IDF’s involvement in policy-making, calling for a ‘civilianization’ of the policy making process.

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