[GushShalom] A Pyrrhic victory - says Yoel Marcus in Ha'aretz

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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