Sharon’s payoff

Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon wasted no time after he cleared all the procedural obstacles to his disengagement from Gaza and northern West Bank plan: within hours of the 2005 budget passing (three months late, barely 36 hours before its final deadline), Sharon rewarded key loyalists who backed him against the referendum and for the budget, handing out three ministries and five deputy ministerships.

The Likud’s Ronni Bar On was appointed Minister of Absorption, the Likud’s Ze’ev Boim was promoted from deputy defense minister to a full Minister for Liaison with the Knesset, and Labor’s Ephraim Sneh was given a ministerial position, without portfolio. At the deputy minister level, he gave five Likud MKs deputy ministerial positions. Magli Wahabah was made deputy minister of public security; Ruhama Avraham was made deputy interior minister; Eli Aflalo was made deputy industry minister; Marina Solodkin was made deputy absorption minister, and Gila Gamliel, who pulled out of the rebels caucus by the time of the referendum vote, was made deputy agriculture minister.

The appointments, clearly payoffs for their votes and support during the past weeks of mounting tension (whether real or inflated) over the survival of his government, were immediately attacked as ‘more Sharon corruption,’ as one of the rebels was quoted anonymously as saying. But since they were utterly political appointments to utterly political positions, even the clean government crusader Elad Shraga of the Movement for Quality Government had to admit that there was nothing to prevent it: the High Court of Justice won’t intervene. Indeed, the biggest problem of all seemed to be where the Knesset carpenters would find room on the plenum floor for three more seats at the government table, already the largest in Israeli history.

Typically, the mini-scandal of the new appointments, which were approved easily by the government but might face an uphill battle in the Knesset (which goes into recess soon for Pesach), overshadowed some other developments that might be of more significance today.

For example, Lands Day, an annual March 30th memorial day by Israel’s Arab citizens marking 1976 demonstrations against land expropriations that ended with six Israelis killed in clashes with police. Since then, the day has been marked by marches and rallies that were met with Israeli establishment suspicion, with police reporters, rather than political reporters, sent to cover the events on the assumption that the demonstrations would turn violent.

Through the 1980s, the annual ceremonies often did result in some clashes with police in some Galilee towns, but since the 1990s, Land Day has become a respectable fixture in the calendar, with arrangements made between police and community leaders before the event to avoid friction.

This year, the focus of the demonstrations is on the sorry state of the Bedouin in the Negev. Most live in so-called ‘unrecognized’ villages, meaning there is no infrastructure such as electricity and running water, no paved roads, and constant harassment by Agriculture Ministry inspectors who try to prevent the Bedouin from farming. Unemployment among Bedouin is highest in Israel, and even though they, like the Druze, serve in the IDF, they suffer from discrimination against them throughout Israeli society.

No rioting is expected today, but there has been a constant steady but muted drumbeat in the Israeli press, particularly when annual statistical reports on issues such as unemployment are released, about how badly the Bedouin are treated by the government. Warnings that a Bedouin intifada in the south is coming have long been issued by liberal groups, and blue ribbon panels have made recommendations for solving the problems. But as often happens in Israel, other issues come along to attract the government’s attention. And practically by definition, Bedouin are always last in line for government generosity. Ironically, just this week, the United Arab List, popular Bedouin of the Negev, won a NIS 55 million handout for Bedouin education from Sharon’s office, as part of a deal that had the two UAL MKs, Abdel Malik Dehamshe and Taleb a Sana abstain in the budget vote. A Sana is a Bedouin. The UAL came under fire from other Arab parties but the NIS 55 million, argued the two MKs is better than nothing. This year’s ceremonies will be focused on tree planting in the unrecognized villages.

An even more important development today was the first arrests made by IDF troops in Gaza since January, when Palestinian police began deploying in the Strip to prevent attacks on Israeli settlers or rocket attacks at western Negev towns like Sderot. Three Palestinians were arrested trying to smuggle Kalshnikov rifles into Gaza from Egypt, across the so-called Phladelphi route at the southern end of the Strip where Israel controls the border area between Gaza and Egypt. The arrests were apparently ‘accidental,’ not based on intelligence gathering but on the smugglers’ failure to avoid patrolling troops. In the West Bank, despite the ongoing quiet by Palestinian groups, IDF troops continue making arrests of suspected terrorists or their accomplices, though in far fewer numbers than in the days when Arafat was alive and there were as many as 50 terror alerts a day.

Israel’s Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz was meanwhile in Washington, no doubt explaining to the Americans that PA President Mahmoud Abbas is still not ‘delivering the goods,’ meaning not collecting arms from the Palestinian terror groups, as well as holding discussions on more strategic issues like Iran and Syria.

And in Israel the army and settlers leaders were talking about making a deal to collect the army-issued weapons in the hands of Gush Katif and northern West Bank settlers on the eve of the evacuation, in the hopes of reducing the probability of gunfire between extremists and the police and soldiers. It’s wishful thinking of course, since there are already plenty of anti-disengagement activists who have long since ceased paying any attention to what the mainstream settler leadership has to say.

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