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withdrawn from during Oslo.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.
