Soccer Dad

Whither Sharon

One of the more remarkable political stories of Western style democracies, is he story of Ariel Sharon. Declared "indirectly responsible" for allowing the massacres at Sabra and Shatila in 1982, Sharon was forced to resign from government. But after wandering in the political desert for nearly twenty years, Ariel Sharon was elected Prime Minister in 2001. His return to politics - and to the top of the political game - has to be one of the great comebacks in annals of democratic politics.
The question is, how did he do it?
My answer has always been that - despite holding positions that some consider extreme - he has been a builder of consensus. He played a role in the creation of the Likud party. He also secured Hareidi support for Netanyahu in 1996. Without that support, Netanyahu never would have won. Perhaps I only was only looking at two data points. On the other I could think of no other reason that he seemingly had a measure likability that even the Left would not deny.
Consequently I've been bothered by his approach to disengagement. It's not just that he's embarking on a policy that in any other context would be deemed immoral. It's that he hasn't even sought a consensus on the subject. The one vote he took - of the Likud membership - he promptly ignored. Yet he refuses to strengthen his position.
Like Rabin before him he seeks to take a controversial measure but without building a necessary public support.
After Oslo, I heard Yechiel Leiter speak. He praised America's founding fathers for insisting on a special majority of approval for treaties. He said that if such important matters required more than just 50 percent for such important matters it would serve as a check to the government. It would also help ensure that the government would use its good sense when making treaties and would give greater legitimacy to these document. In contrast, approval for Oslo II came from a sneaky legislative maneuver. (Long gone too was the promise that Rabin would not negotiate with the PLO.)
But the approach of Yitzchak Rabin has been the approach of Ariel Sharon. Instead of ensuring that his controversial policy would have the widest public support, PM Sharon has acted if he's scared of the public. (And he too, came to power by rejecting the policy he now embraces.)
I think that a referendum would be useful. For it could shore up the PM's support. Sharon has never gone to the people and made his case. This would force him to. And I don't agree with the nasty sentiments of Ha-Sheretz Ha-Aretz:

The government of Israel is the body that decided to establish the settlements, even assisting them with taxpayers' money (without a referendum), and it is the body that is now deciding to withdraw from some of them. If the settlers are demanding a referendum in the Messiah's name, there is no point in discussing the issue with them, since no decision will satisfy their faith. If they are asking because of their misery, they ought to be reminded that there are many in Israel who are more miserable, but are not receiving financial compensation for their misery or for the fact that they have no roof over their heads. And if the settlers are arguing in the name of democracy, they must once again be told that the decision to remove the settlements of Gush Katif was made by the cabinet and Knesset - and in a far more open and democratic fashion than the decision to establish them was.

It's not just an issue of democracy. It also is a matter of political support. Yet its more important for Ha-Sheretz Ha-Aretz to trumpet its victory over those it disagrees with and despises than it is to build support for a policy it supports. A little humility would be in order for editors of Ha-Sheretz Ha-Aretz for weren't they among those who kept insisting that Yasser Arafat was part of the solution? How many people died because of policies Ha-Aretz thought was correct a decade ago and didn't have to undergo the rigor of a referendum? One would think that those who were so wrong would have developed a slight sense of shame.
Again why hasn't PM Sharon sought to gain more public approval of disengagement? And why does he go about it in a way ensured to be ever more divisive?
A couple of writers have recently tried to decipher the Prime Minister. Zev Chafets, who in the past has shown himself to be somewhat perceptive wrote the very silly "Follow the Leader" in the NY Times last week.

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Follow the Leader
By ZEV CHAFETS

Published: February 15, 2005

RIEL SHARON is not a Christian. He doesn't believe that the meek will inherit the earth. He doesn't love his enemies. Put him on the road to Damascus and he is more apt to channel George Patton than Saul of Tarsus.

Lately, though, Mr. Sharon seems to have undergone some sort of conversion. He's become a proponent of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. He's willing, even eager, to withdraw Israelis from settlements he himself helped build in Gaza. He's authorized the release of Palestinian prisoners. Last week, he went to Sharm el Sheik, Egypt, and, with the whole world watching, warmly took the hand of Mahmoud Abbas. It wasn't the first time Mr. Sharon had been photographed shaking hands with a Palestinian leader, but it was the first time he ever looked happy about it.

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Just after that meeting, Palestinian terrorists fired mortars at Israeli settlements in Gaza. In the past, Mr. Sharon would have replied with a barrage of missiles and harsh words about Palestinian perfidy. This time, he turned a pudgy cheek.

Some believe that Mr. Sharon - the symbol of intransigent hawkishness - has seen the light of nonviolence. (Mr. Abbas, in an interview this weekend, said that Mr. Sharon is speaking "a different language.") But this misunderstands the man and the moment. Ariel Sharon hasn't found a new language or a new religion; he has simply embraced a new leader: George W. Bush.

Mr. Sharon is often portrayed as a Machiavellian geo-strategist. But he is no visionary. In more than 50 years in public life, he has never uttered a thought larger than "Charge!" He is, in fact, a born trouble-shooter, the brilliantly effective clenched fist of a string of mentors stretching from Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, to the 43d president of the United States.

In Chafets's argument, Sharon is the puppet of others. Now it is the vision of President Bush he fulfills. I don't buy it. This is a man who always led others. I believe he's changed his mind. But I don't believe that he only functions as another's fist.
Michael Oren's "True Colors" rings truer:

By talking right but acting pragmatically, Sharon was adhering to the classic Mapainik tradition. Yet, in addition to its distinctive stands on territorial and security issues, that heritage also had a peculiar relationship with democracy. In contrast to Revisionists and Likudniks, who traced their intellectual roots back to nineteenth-century Central European liberalism, Mapai's founders came from the revolutionary turmoil of turn-of-the-century Russia, with its preference for proletarian dictatorships. In Israel, the nonreligious right has always been the champion of individual freedoms and the rule of law, while leftist leaders were notorious for pushing through their personal agendas, irrespective of democratic norms. The young Ben-Gurion, who modeled himself on Lenin, rejected the liberal constitution proposed by Herut shortly after independence. He waged a war against Egypt in 1956 without so much as informing the Knesset.

In his disavowal of democratic institutions, Sharon is much less a Likudnik than a Mapainik. Several ministers insinuated that he executed Israel's ill-fated 1982 invasion of Lebanon almost unilaterally, without fully consulting the cabinet. Similarly, Sharon was accused of singlehandedly allocating vast sums for the construction of roads and settlements in the territories. And today, Sharon is once again revealing his Mapainik relationship with democracy. His decision to disengage from Gaza is based on the practical realization that the majority of Israelis are no longer willing to defend the settlements there and that Israel's occupation of the Strip only strengthens Palestinian demands for the creation of a binational Arab-Jewish state. Evacuating Gaza also enables Sharon to test the willingness and ability of Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas to crack down on terrorism before Israel proceeds to negotiate the future of the West Bank and Jerusalem--all policies unacceptable to true Likudniks like Begin and Benjamin Netanyahu, who could be pragmatic under U.S. pressure but would never give up on the idea of a Greater Israel.

Were he in power today, Ben-Gurion would have done exactly the same as Sharon. Ben-Gurion also would not have let opponents in his own party, or in society at large, stand in his way. Sharon, too, has trampled over detractors--first by inviting a Likud referendum on disengagement, then by ignoring its results when he lost. He has since rejected all suggestions of holding a national plebiscite on withdrawal. In fact, Sharon is proceeding with disengagement while enjoying a majority of only two votes in the Knesset, both of which he purchased from ultra-Orthodox parties by agreeing to fund their religious schools.

According to Oren, Sharon's political heritage is that of Mapai that includes a tendency to ignore democratic niceties in order to accomplish what he wants.
(About twenty years ago Sidney Zion observed in an article that then PM Begin, when he came to power, surrounded himself with the generals of the Haganah - Dayan and Weizmann - instead of his old comrade in arms. This would seem to fit Oren's thesis at least indirectly.)
So how does one go from enthusiastically supporting the enterprise of settling Yesha to marginalizing those who listened to his exhortations? And how does one who always seemed to work toward consensus now reject that approach in the most abject of ways?
Willow Tree is distressed over a report that Israel is specifically training non-Jewish policemen to handle the evacuation of Jews. As the country releases terrorists who were not fortunate enough to kill anyone despite their best efforts, turns on legitimate protesters with a vengeance. Hearkening back to the days of Avishai Raviv a government agent has reportedly crossed the line from spying on political opponents to delegitimizing them. Finally the government will prevent legitimate protest against its policies by declaring communities in Gaza to be closed military zones.
Ariel Sharon has gone against his history by seeking to uporoot Jews from their homes. Homes that he once encouraged them to inhabit. And instead of seeking consensus to support him, he only seeks to stifle to dissent. Frankly I find the latter a lot more disturbing than the first. And even more mystifyting.

Posted by SoccerDad at February 22, 2005 06:32 AM | TrackBack