[GushShalom] A Pyrrhic victory - says Yoel Marcus in Ha'aretz
Gush Shalom (Israeli Peace Bloc)
info at gush-shalom.org
Wed Jan 29 23:46:23 IST 2003
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Gush Shalom
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International release
Jan. 29, 2003
It was hardly a surprise. Over the past month, opinion polls
had persistently predicted that Sharon will get a renewed
mandate despite the mess into which the country got under
his leadership in the past two years. Still, counting the votes
at a polling station in a Tel-Aviv suburb it was disheartening to
see the pile of Likud voting slips becoming so much bigger
than anything else. Later, sitting deep into the night in front of
the TV screens, and seeing the results unfold, this picture
was confrimed.
Labor's going back from 25 to 19 was foreseen but Meretz' fall
from 10 to 6 was worse than expected. Hadash and Balad
each conquered an extra seat, going up from 3 to 4, and from
2 to 3 respectively - against two less for the United Arab List
which now will have two seats. As a total, a heavy blow for the
peace camp. And it is hardly a consolation that the votes did
not so much go to Likud as to Shinuy (which climbed from 6
to 15 seats).
Shinuy succeeded to draw votes away from Labor and Meretz
with its attack on the ultra-Orthodox as parasites. In these
circles there is quite some frustration about the exemption
from army service which Yeshiva students enjoy. But Shinuy
has no political program and brings a lot of unexperienced
people into the Knesset. Furthermore, it's leader, the populist
Tommy Lapid, is not so far away from Sharon when it comes
to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
As an extraparliamentary peace group we have already
wheathered storms and will continue to say loud what we have
to say - whether it makes us popular or not.
Right now there is one new task for people like us: use all
possible channels to strengthen the Labor Party's
determination NOT to go into the government. A decimated
but determined Labor Party in opposition may at least put the
myth to an end that "the concensus is behind Sharon". This
may invite - if not the United States - at least Europe to use
its leverage in order to end the strangulation of the
Palestinians.
Yoel Marcus - a generally liberal columnist whose fluctating
posiitions can be read as a kind of barometer - shows in the
following article that with this opinion we are right now not
alone.
Ha'aretz, Jan. 29, 2003
A Pyrrhic victory
By Yoel Marcus
A little bit of advice to Sharon's most loyal friends, advisers
and supporters: Don't brag, don't dance on the rooftops, don't
drink too much champagne. The election exercise could yet
turn out to be Sharon's Pyrrhic victory. For those who don't
know, the Greek King Epirus, beat the Romans but lost his
army, and in the third century BCE, coined the phrase
"another victory like this and we're lost."
Sharon beat Labor, which anyway was on the ropes,
significantly increased the Likud's representation in the
Knesset, but first and foremost, screwed himself. With the
public turning right and the collapse of the peace process, he
now faces the nightmare of a narrow, extremist government.
He lost the respectability Labor gave him as a fig leaf for his
policies of force. Peres defended him on his travels around the
universe, while Fuad talked peace but did what Sharon
wanted. It is difficult to understand how Sharon allowed Fuad
to go for a handful of dollars that Ben-Eliezer needed to
improve his standing in the Labor primaries. Sharon can ask
himself what the early elections gave him, other than the fact
instead of Peres, he might end up with Lieberman.Sharon will
be prisoner of the extremist right.
A ruling by Rabbi Ovadia, that settlements can't be forsaken,
guarantees Sharon a narrow extremist-Haredi government.
America won't like that. With the friendship that has emerged
between Sharon and Bush, America after Iraq will want a
government that will negotiate over a Palestinian state and
dismantling settlements. And while there's understanding for
"Israel's right to defend itself," the elimination of Arafat, the
wet dream of a right-wing government, will be a casus belli for
America.
Sharon speaks passionately about a unity government but he
doesn't know how he'll form it. Either he's counting on a split
in Labor, or that it comes back without Mitzna. Or he's
counting on Shinui, which is still a UFO, and it's still not clear
if it's a bird or a plane. Or maybe he's counting on what looks
like a dream - a government without Haredim.
But in every constellation, no matter how fantastic, Sharon is
the victim of his recent past: his political failure on the
diplomatic front, the security and economic crisis, which
sowed despair in the public, is the gruel he'll have to eat in the
first year of his second term. The salvation of Sharon Chapter
2, as a severely constrained prime minister despite his victory,
could come from the war in Iraq, which might serve as an
excuse for a broad emergency government.
Right now, the wise would advise Labor to hold on outside the
government, and build itself up as an alternative. In any case,
an extremist government won't last long. With the same
passion the people wanted Sharon, they could want to get rid
of him. Sharon's seen that before.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=257
181&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&lis
tSrc=Y
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