The trouble with Sharon's victory, Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Israel was keeping up its pressure on militants – with air strikes against several targets in Gaza overnight and more arrests of Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists in the West Bank. In addition, troops raided 15 offices of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and even one Fateh office in the West Bank, claiming that those offices had funneled money to terrorist activity, expropriating computer disks for intelligence purposes.

There were also reports this morning that Syrian President Bashar Assad had called in the Palestinian leadership in exile in Damascus and asked them to step up their anti-Israeli actions, in an effort to divert international pressure on him. Deputy defense minister Zev Boim, who is slated to become a minister this fall if Sharon can impose discipline on the Likud faction, told Israel Radio that the U.S. has 'precise' information about Syrian involvement in Iraqi terror.

This morning, outgoing Military Intelligence commander Maj. Gen. Aharon Zeevi-Farkash told a Tel Aviv University conference that the Palestinian Authority is incapable of cracking down on the Hamas and Islamic Jihad, presenting a gloomy picture of the Palestinian territories sinking into an anarchy of armed gangs.

It's just such a scenario of a paralysis in the political process, with terror refusing to disarm, that prompted Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's strategic advisor Eyal Arad – and surprisingly, Sharon's ally Tzachi Hanegbi – to predict that if some time in the relatively near future (a year or two, said Hanegbi) Israel sees no partner on the Palestinian side, it will take unilateral action to change the status quo. That would include disengagement from parts of the West Bank, and, as Hanegbi declared on Army Radio, 'positive steps, like annexing those areas that anyway will remain forever part of Israel, such as the Ariel area, Maale Adumim, Kiryat Arba, Gush Etzion, of course, and the Jordan Valley and the Golan Heights.'

The prevailing conventional wisdom now is that Sharon, victorious over Binyamin Netanyahu and the 'rebels' in the Likud central committee, now intends to enforce coalition discipline on his party in the Knesset when the parliament reconvenes after the holidays in October. He'll present the House with a 'political-diplomatic' plan that will more or less echo the speech he delivered to the UN, recognizing Palestinian national rights that require 'painful concessions' of territory by Israel. And perhaps in November or December, in time for the next Herzliya Conference, he'll come up with a programmatic plan for the near and not so near future.

Maybe. Meanwhile, he has to deal with the headache of a victory narrow enough for some, if not all the rebels, to declare the rebellion goes on, and if the Hamas and Islamic Jihad are able to translate their promises to keep the pan-Palestinian cease-fire, Sharon will soon discover that the laurels of disengagement's success and his central committee victory are much too small to rest on.

The international community – and Palestinians like Saeb Erekat this morning on Army Radio – might be according him the flattery of being a courageous leader, but the pressure will come for progress on the political plane. That means he'll eventually have to meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who is still trying to 'mainstream' the terror groups – and presumably will be seeking some goodwill gestures or confidence building measures, like prisoner releases.

But Sharon is in no mood for prisoner releases nowadays, especially not after the Hamas kidnapped and murdered a 53-year-old Israeli candy marketer, making a Iraq-like videotape of the blindfolded man before he was executed. That kidnapping took place in the West Bank, where Hamas cells operate independently from Gaza politics, where the political echelon is eager to take part in the upcoming Palestinian Legislative Council elections and understands that the Palestinian electorate is sick and tired of the 'armed resistance.'

Sharon and Abbas were supposed to meet this coming Sunday. The Qassam fire and resulting Israeli retaliation, meant to impose a zero-tolerance deterrence against any Palestinian attacks on Israel from Gaza canceled that meeting. And yesterday, Justice Minister Tzipi Livne, one of the Likud moderates who sides with Sharon, canceled a meeting with the Palestinian Minister for Prisoner Affairs Sufian Abu Zaydeh, with whom she was to discuss prisoner releases as part of the preparations for a Sharon-Abbas meeting, whenever it takes place.

As of 10:30 Wednesday night, all the Palestinian groups committed to the tahidye, the Cairo-mediated ceasefire meant to last until at least after the January elections for a new Palestinian legislature, had kept their promise all day to hold fire and end attacks on Israel from Gaza. Abbas now has an invigtation from Washington for an October 20 meeting with Bush. Any Palestinian who breaks the ceasefire ahead of that will be branded a traitor by the Palestinian Authority.

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