By Dr. Nayyer Ali

Beginning of the End in Palestine

December 02, 2005

Israeli politics was turned upside down last week by the dramatic decision of Ariel Sharon to leave the Likud party, the political party he helped found over 30 years ago, and create a new political party called “Kadima”. Why did he do this, and what does it imply for the Palestinians and the future?
Israel began to deal seriously with the Palestinians in the early 1990s when the Labor party under Yitzhak Rabin finally accepted that Israel could not rule the West Bank and Gaza forever. This created the badly flawed Oslo process, in which no one committed to the endgame, and this flaw finally exploded after Camp David in 2000, primarily because the Israelis had not come to terms with how far they needed to go to end the conflict. Namely they needed to accept a fully sovereign Palestinian state on all of the West Bank and Gaza, with a capital in East Jerusalem, and a full return to the pre-1967 border.
Throughout the 1990s the hard-line Likud party was critical of Oslo, and still felt that Israel could colonize the West Bank and never give it up. After Camp David failed, Israel handed power to the architect of the settlement program and the head of Likud, Ariel Sharon.
Sharon proceeded to destroy the Palestinian Authority and reoccupy the areas that Israeli forces had withdrawn from during Oslo. In the name of security, he began building a wall that was meant to act as a cage for the Palestinian population. These policies were supported by the Likud party. But in 2004, Sharon changed his mind. He began to see that the only way for Israel to permanently get out of this conflict was to do what the Labor party had set out to do 12 years ago. Sharon accepted that the Palestinians were “occupied”, and that only ending that would end the conflict. He unilaterally withdrew from Gaza last summer, and forcibly removed the Israeli settlers. This action forced the Likud members to confront the real question, what is the future for Israel. They rejected this approach and have been waging an unrelenting campaign to depose Sharon and return Likud to its right-wing policies.
Sharon, instead of continuing to battle his own political party, decided to quit the party, accept new elections that were made inevitable by the Labor party decision to leave the government, and run on a platform of ending the conflict with the Palestinians. Sharon’s new party “Kadima” has vaulted to the top of the polls in Israel, ahead of the election due in March. As it now stands, Kadima would win 40 out of 120 seats in the next Knesset, with Labor winning 27 seats. Likud appears likely to be crushed, and is polling only 10 seats.
Sharon’s party has declared a platform of settling the conflict with the Palestinians, but the terms are not acceptable to the Palestinians. Sharon wants to keep the large Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and he wants to keep all of Jerusalem. If Sharon accepts that he has no right to rule the 2 million Palestinians of the West Bank, it is illogical of him to insist on the right to rule the 200,000 Palestinians of East Jerusalem. In addition, no Muslim country will accept a peace that does not result in a Palestinian flag flying over Al-Aqsa.
Sharon claims that he will follow the “Roadmap”, but that is a dead policy. He insists that the Palestinians disband Hamas before he will even talk to them. Frankly, the Palestinians have no interest in a civil war just for the right to talk to Sharon. If Sharon is serious, he will accept the outcome of the Palestinian elections in January, in which Hamas is running, and deal directly with the elected representatives of the Palestinians. Sharon has far more innocent blood on his hand than any Palestinian does. Comments can reach me at Nali@socal.rr.com.


 


 



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