Humming the melody, Tuesday, September 06, 2005

The key ingredient missing from the Israeli-Palestinian equation for the last several years has been goodwill of any kind – with nobody on any side trying to apply some to win friends instead of preserve enemies. This morning, the High Court of Justice in Israel took an unusual step, instructing the government to make a good faith approach to the Palestinians to make a good faith gesture and promise to protect as holy sites, some of the synagogues in the settlements left behind in Gaza.

According to a state lawyer, the Palestinians have already rejected such a request, but the court asked Prime Minister Ariel Sharon this morning to go back to them with the request. It’s a don’t know whether to laugh or cry situation – the one thing Sharon has tried more than anything else to avoid during all five years he has been in office has been any gestures of goodwill toward the Palestinians, and he certainly does not want to be seen making any requests for goodwill on their part toward Israel.

But who knows? The politics is very fluid nowadays and Sharon, whose evacuation of the Gaza settlements has proven that he is the most cynical politician in the region, able to turn a policy 90, degrees, indeed 180 degrees, on a dime, still obviously has some surprises up his sleeve.

Thus, a new Haaretz poll shows the mood is changing in the Likud central committee. Sharon is gaining on Netanyahu, whose campaign is stuttering with bad press, splits in his campaign management, and an increasingly strident tone that seems to alienate as many voters as it attracts.

The prime minister is working the phones and holding heart to heart talks with powerful Likud insiders, like mayors who control blocks of votes inside the central committee -- and thousands of jobs throughout the country. They understand very well that a Netanyahu victory over Sharon at the end of this month would probably mean a split in the party and an end to the party’s 28-year grip on government in Israel. The showdown is on September 25th with the 3,200 central committee members supposedly going to the polls the next day to vote on whether to advance the primaries inside the Likud, as Netanyahu wants.

Between now and then, Sharon will be at the UN General Assembly where he anticipates a hero’s welcome as the evacuator of Gaza. He’ll meet with dozens of foreign leaders – but as of now, he’ll apparently wait until his return to Israel, and presumably after the Likud central committee session, to meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. He’ll also hold meetings with wealthy American supporters, as have Netanyahu and Likud third candidate, ideologue Uzi Landau, raising money for their campaigns to bring him down.

While the world will be hoping – but most likely in vain – to hear from Sharon about plans for movement on the political front with the Palestinians (and not just another call on Abbas to crack down on terror), Sharon’s mission to New York will also be focused on getting an answer to a very important question: has Bush lost political strength because of Hurricane Katrina.

Ironically, if Bush has lost domestic political strength – which is likely – he might try to compensate with an even more activist foreign policy and that could spell pressure on Israel. The Americans are as worried about the political instability in Israel as they are about the political instability in Palestine. They’ve put their bets on Sharon (with Peres at his side) and on Abbas. Until Katrina, Sharon – and to a certain extent Abbas – were able to count on Bush. But now, wounded by the reactions to his disastrous response to the disaster, Bush could turn unpredictable for both of them.

Not that any pressure will be evident before the central committee session. Nor does it seem any pressure is necessary. Despite predictions of a Sharon turn rightward, he seems mostly to be doing what he has always done best, shooting and dodging, looking for an opportunity for breakthroughs. It’s what he did as a soldier, it’s how he organized the ‘settlement enterprise’ when he became the patron politician for Gush Emunim in the 1970s, and it is how he has managed his nearly five full years as prime minister.

Thus, this week, the Palestinians are speaking openly of positive cooperation with the Israeli security authorities and Israel seems resigned to the Palestinians getting independent access to the world. There might not be any Israelis at the Rafah border crossing, and the Palestinians apparently are not objecting to Israeli security-customs inspections on goods entering Gaza.

On the settlement front, a deputy mayor of Ariel told the deputy defense minister who was on a press tour of the West Bank town of 20,000-25,000 that 3,000 new apartments are to be built there. The international press jumped on it, so the diplomats did as well. By this morning, the government was denying such plans were in the offing, though the Defense Ministry said it had approved construction of about 100 new apartments for the town. Something similar happened with the E-1 area between Maale Adumim and East Jerusalem – Sharon reportedly wants a police station built there, Netanyahu promises a neighborhood of 25,000, and Olmert denies any construction is due at all.

Maybe it’s all shooting and dodging, but in the meanwhile, it’s also all dancing alone. Sooner or later, the disengagement from Gaza and the northern West Bank will require a tango with the Palestinians, as the Americans play the music. Despite the noises made by the radicals on both sides, the polls all agree nowadays that most Israelis and most Palestinians want to see the dancing begin -- and the question is whether Sharon will make the final breakthrough, and start humming the tune himself as his election campaign promise.

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