Cyril Kern, redux, Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Last night's revelation by Channel Ten that the police have admitted to a court that they have reason to suspect Ariel Sharon and his sons accepted and kept some $3 million in bribes from Martin Schlaff and his brother, via Cyril Kern, reopened the Kern affair, but it is much too soon to determine if the renewed scandal involving the premier will have an impact on the elections.

In any case, Sharon's Kadima party is barreling ahead in the polls, gaining three more seats to reach 41-42 according to the Haaretz poll this morning, as Labor loses two more seats, dropping to 19 seats, while the Likud remains steady at 14 seats. But the most significant number in the Haaretz-Dialog poll is clearly the 25 percent who say they could yet change their vote.

The poll came out on the eve of the prime minister's angioplastic surgery, meant to repair a small, congenital hole between two of his heart cavities, which doctors say was the reason he suffered a minor stroke recently as a result of a blood clot making its way through the hole. The entire procedure due in Thursday, is said to take about three hours from the time he is given general anesthesia to the time he awakens. His deputy, Ehud Olmert, has been formally named as Sharon's replacement for those few hours.

Of course, despite all the efforts by the premier's doctors to put a good face on the show, saying the operation is nearly routine, 'simple,' etc., any invasive operation is risky, particularly for an overweight man in his 70s who has been taking pills for gout for years and is essentially blind in his left eye.

So far, Sharon's heath problems have obviously not affected his Kadima campaign adversely, if anything, he is perceived as much more of a machismo, able to go into surgery without batting an eyelash and still manipulate the political arena any way he wants.

But a Sharon departure from the political arena, now or in the inevitable future, is going to be the real 'big bang' of Israeli politics, as he and Shimon Peres are the last two Israeli politicians who were adults (albeit young adults) in the War of Independence, the last two who remember the shock of the news about what happened in Europe to the Jews, the last of those who remember the Israeli nation-building of the 1930s-1950s, the last two who remember the nation's founding father, David Ben Gurion.

When Sharon goes, whenever that happens and for whatever reason, the last of the titans will disappear from the arena and suddenly, it will become a more or less even and level playing field, something it has not been since Sharon's arrival in the prime minister's office five years ago. Since then, he has not merely dominated Israeli politics, he has controlled it almost completely, first imposing a no negotiations with the Palestinians policy, and then inventing his unilateral evacuation of Gaza and the northern West Bank around Jenin, a move that was predicted to start an Israeli civil war but in the end took only barely a week from start to finish.

Sharon's departure is inevitable, of course, since he is only human. But neither his health problems nor his legal problems seem likely yet to drive him off the stage before the national elections on March 28. Still, the possibility that he might be forced out is not far-fetched. Much can happen between now and March 28, from major changes in the Palestinian Authority as a result of their January 25 elections, to the pace at which the police work on the renewed probe into the so-called Cyril Kern affair, in which the Sharon family received $3 million (and not $4.5 million as reported yesterday) from the powerful international businessman Martin Schlaff, to pay back monies illegally raised and used during Sharon's 1999 Likud primaries campaigns, keeping $1.5 million in Sharon bank account. Since Schlaff is owner of the Jericho casino, and has other business interests in the Middle East, it is easy to see how the money transfer, done in a roundabout manner from Austria to the U.S. to Israel, would appear to be a bribe to Sharon so the premier protects Schlaff's interests in Israel – and Palestine. Indeed, the Jericho casino was never physically damaged during the years of intifada, though it has still not recovered as a popular destination for gambling-mad Israelis. It would take a real peace agreement between Israel and the PA for Israeli gamblers to return to the resort. And that's something Sharon has never promised anyone.

The police revelation yesterday came as a result of their search of the Schlaff's parents' apartment in Israel after James Schlaff, Martin's brother, flew in with them for a family visit. Martin, who used to be a regular visitor to Israel -- the premier's consigliere, Dov Weisglass is Schallf's lawyer in Israel – has not been here since the Kern affair broke open almost exactly three years ago, also during an election campaign. Schlaff also avoided police inquiries made in Austria, by Israeli police. The international crimes unit and fraud squad had a search warrant for the Schlaff home – if one of the brothers appeared -- and their warrant enabled them to grab two of James' laptops in the hope of finding more evidence linking the Schlaff brothers to the mysterious $3 million that flowed in and out of the Sharon family accounts.

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