Hurricane, Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Last night, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon finally said in public what he is known to be saying in private for years – that Netanyahu is dangerous for Israel. ‘He’s a pushover under pressure, he panics he gets hysterical I’ve seen it for years … and this job requires nerves of steel. He’s not fit to be premier.’ In an interview with Channel Ten’s Mordechai Kirschenbaum and Yaron London, he scoffed at the idea he would serve as a number 2 under Netanyahu, if after a showdown between them, Netanyahu wins.

Netanyahu’s supporters among the Likud ‘rebels’ – almost all of them freshmen MKs and many of them not likely to return to the Knesset – immediately declared that ‘Sharon is obviously hysterical and in a panic.’ But Kirschenbaum, speaking to Army Radio this morning, said he and his partner London found a confident, calm prime minister. ‘While everyone is busy with the Sharoln-Bibi story, you’ve missed the big news from the interview,’ said Kirschenbaum, who never hides his ‘Leftist’ political views. ‘He admitted that more settlements in the West Bank will have to be evacuated – and that if he loses to Bibi, he is not leaving politics.’ Indeed. All the predictions that Sharon would take a sharp turn right after the disengagement have so far been proven wrong. If anything, Sharon sounds ever more like a politician of the Israeli Center – concerned about security but insisting that it is his duty to ‘make the effort to make peace or at least take a step forward toward it.’

Sharon’s open assault on Netanyahu was prompted by an internal Likud tribunal decision to call the party’s central committee into session on September 25 to decide on early elections in a vote the next day. Everyone is interpreting the decision as a direct challenge to the sitting premier, who will arrive at the central committee session almost directly from the UN General Assembly, where Sharon is expected to star as the Israeli prime minister who evacuated Gaza. Not that central committee members are impressed by the UN. If anything, they are suspicious of foreign praise for Sharon, since its proof of what they think – that he has sold out to the goyim. And worse, he did so by betraying Likud voters.

Netanyahu meanwhile is holding a press conference in Tel Aviv today, formally announcing his challenge to Sharon’s leadership. As of noon, none of the Likud ministers were expected to attend as his backers. The highest ranking Likud politician Netanyahu can possibly expect to find at his side is Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin. Likud ministers Tzachi Hanegbi, Yisrael Katz and Silvan Shalom are twisting in the wind, trying to explain they are neutral, claiming they are trying to preserve Likud unity, and looking for ways to essentially shackle Sharon without directly offending him and without appearing to play second fiddle to Netanyahu. After all, as Shalom said bluntly this morning on Army Radio, ‘if Sharon doesn’t run for the Likud leadership, then everything is open,’ meaning, as broadcaster Razi Barkai stated, Shalom will also consider running against Netanyahu.

In essence, the ruling party in Israel is now moving to depose its leader, whose popularity in the polls of the general electorate has risen in the wake of the disengagement. With Netanyahu at their head, say the polls, the Likud can expect to lose as much as half its representation in the Knesset. At the head of his own party, Sharon could still come out of the elections as Israel’s next premier – or even, unbelievably, as the head of a party that joins a coalition led by none other than Shimon Peres as head of Labor. The same polls that show Netanyahu roundly defeating Sharon inside the Likud, show that Peres at the head of Labor could defeat Netanyahu at the head of the Likud. In short, for the third time since 1992, it appears the Right will bring down its own prime minister. Of course, the Right nowadays says Sharon is a Trojan horse for the Left, a traitor, dictator, mafia godfather, the devil’s own representative on earth.

On the other hand, predictions of Sharon’s demise inside the Likud may be premature. There are 800-900 solid Sharon supporters in the central committee, and about 1,000 anti-Sharon activists lined up with Netanyahu, Uzi Landau or Moshe Faiglin, the extreme Rightist. That leaves another 1,100 central committee members who are on the fence. Presumably they have not been driven crazy – and ‘crazed’ is indeed a word that many in the Israeli political press were using this morning to describe what is taking place inside the Likud. It would be crazy for the Likud to dump Sharon, the biggest vote getter in Israel nowadays, guarantor that the ruling party continues to rule.

In any case, there’s a hurricane now barreling down on the Israeli political arena. Whether it remains at Level 5 or drops to tropical storm levels, it will leave casualties on the political battleground. The question is only how many – and who.

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