Soccer Dad: Kadimah? achor!

November 28, 2005

Kadimah? achor!

As the Palestinian celebrate their great victory:

Secretary General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, said that the opening of Rafah International Crossing is a Palestinian achievement resulting from steadfastness and just struggle.
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Ihsanoglu expressed his hope that the opening of Rafah crossing will be "a preliminary step toward the complete liberation of all Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) and the establishment of the independent and fully sovereign Palestinian State Jerusalem as its capital".
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He reaffirmed the OIC'S unwavering position regarding assisting the Palestinian people in their just struggle to regain their inalienable national rights, renewing his appeal to the Member States to continue to assist the Palestinian people in order to ease their suffering and enable them to build their national institutions and help them obtain their freedom and independence.
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The Secretary General also called upon the international community and the international Quartet to intensify their endeavours in order to compel Israel to implement previous agreements on the opening of the Arafat International Airport and the building of a seaport as two vital gates for the Palestinian people and significant symbols of their national freedom and sovereignty.

And the world as whole regards it as a "landmark":

Marking milestone, Palestinians take control of border

Ah but there's a fine detail:

Israel watches over closed-circuit television but cannot veto travelers.

Israel reasonably wanted to be able to veto the terrorists certain to seek free passage between the outside world and Gaza. The Palestinians despite their constant bad faith demanded that without ultimate control over their crossing Gaza would be just one big prison. James Wolfensohn echoed the Palestinian position. As did Secretary Rice. And PM Sharon failed to stand up for the safety of his country's citizens and "compromised."

PM Sharon's solicitousness towards the Palestinians who seek to destroy Israel stands in marked contrast to his treatment of those whose eviction made the Gaza "triumph" possible. The Jerusalem Post notes in "Unsettled:"

Families whose world literally came crashing down must somehow cope in this atmosphere of apathy and worse. It need hardly be stressed that officialdom's failure does not distinguish between those who pulled up stakes prior to the deadline and those who stayed put to the last minute.

According to the Government Employment Service, 1,990 of Gush Katif's former residents - 75 percent of the income-earners - are unemployed to date. There's no unemployment office at any of the large evacuee concentrations, including at the fiberglass mobile-home camp in Nitzan. Job offers are scant and the few available are often at minimum wage.

None of the evacuated farmers has yet been compensated and none has received land to cultivate. There hasn't even been remuneration for the hothouses purchased via the World Bank to offer employment to local Palestinians. The World Bank argues that since these hothouses were looted (by Palestinians) there's no obligation to reimburse Israeli farmers who kept their part of the bargain.

It's worth noting that the editors of the Jerusalem Post supported disengagement; at least they acknowledged the responsibility that the government has to its citizens.

But this isn't the only way PM Sharon has failed, Hillel Halkin, an admirer of Sharon and disengagement nonetheless has harsh words for Sharon in a Bad Decision:

True enough, had Sharon stayed in the Likud, he would have faced another term as prime minister with a rebellious parliamentary faction that he would have had difficulty controlling. But it's a prime minister's job to control his own party, and Sharon had all the tools of politics and patronage to do it with. Current surveys show that, running in the next election without him, the Likud will lose over half of its strength. In what other country did a political party ever volunteer to be decimated at the polls?

It shouldn't have happened. And had Arik Sharon treated the members of his own party as he should have, it wouldn't have. Had he bothered, over the past three years, to explain to them, argue with them, persuade them, appeal to them, flatter them, reward them - in short, to make them feel respected and treated as partners - rather than simply hand down his diktats, they wouldn't have encouraged him to leave the driver's seat of their bus and collectively jump off the bridge that it was crossing.

And Ari Shavit in A truthful agenda has repeated (and added to) the sorry state of Israeli political campaigns (earlier noted by Ofer Haivry in Azure):

All the election campaigns that have been conducted in Israel in the past decade have been deceptive. Yitzhak Rabin misled the Israeli public (and himself) when he was elected in 1992 on the basis of "We're tired of corruption," without saying a word about Yasser Arafat, about the Palestine Liberation Organization, or about the Oslo plan. Benjamin Netanyahu knowingly misled the Israeli public when he was elected in 1996 on the basis of the promise to abide by the Oslo Accords, without saying a word about the fact that his real intention was to suffocate Oslo elegantly. Ehud Barak deliberately misled the Israeli public when he was elected in 1999 on behalf of the elderly woman lying in the hospital corridor (for lack of space), without saying a word about the partitioning of Jerusalem, about a withdrawal from the Jordan Valley, and about descending from the Golan Heights to the shores of Lake Kinneret. And Ariel Sharon misled the Israeli public in good faith when he was elected in 2003 after firmly opposing then Labor leader Amran Mitzna's plan (to evacuate Gush Katif and to take unilateral steps to separate from the Palestinians), and without saying a word about evacuating settlements, about a unilateral move and about a withdrawal from the Gaza Strip without receiving anything in return.

(Shavit earlier had written "Why we hate him, where he wrote:

So, do we hate Benjamin Netanyahu because his government hastily and recklessly adopted irreversible historic decisions with blatant disregard for proper procedure, not bothering to take account of the feelings of half the country, only bothering to receive Knesset approval after the fact?

Oops. That would be the Rabin and Peres governments. As for ourselves, we simply remained silent. We did not feel that proper procedure and fair democratic rules and proper public debate were so important. We, who hate Netanyahu so much because he is forcing his worldview upon us, did not even consider hating Rabin and Peres for the patronizing manner in which they pushed through such a fateful historic decision, forcing their worldview upon the entire Israeli public.

Netanyahu, despite what his past detractors, and current supporters say, did not "suffocate" or attempt to suffocate the peace process. He did try to slow it down but he had a map in 1997 outlining what he thought Israel's borders should be. It wouldn't be enough by Palestinian standards; but nothing that leaves a Jewish state on the shores of the Mediteranean would accomplish that.)

Though I don't agree totally with Shavit, he understands that honesty is needed here:

Amir Peretz is a man of truth - authentic, intelligent, charismatic. Therefore, when he comes to propose his Geneva path to us, he must clearly state that he is proposing the Geneva path. When he comes to propose peace within the 1967 borders, he must tell us honestly that he is proposing peace within the 1967 borders. It is unworthy for Peretz's challenging social welfare platform to serve as a smokescreen that hides the true agenda from the voters. It is not worthy for the socialist spark of Labor controlled by One Nation (Peretz's faction) to cause the residents of Sderot, Ofakim and Netivot to be ignorant of the life-and-death decision they are about to make at the polls on March 28, 2006. The agenda of this election campaign cannot be dishonest. Regardless of the outcome, the agenda must be a truthful one.

Not that anyone would expect honesty from Sharon at this point. This has been one of the shortcomings of the peace process so far. It has required consecutive governments to promote it against the mandate they've received. No doubt some will say that this is due to the fact that Israelis are not ready for peace. And maybe that's true. Especially if you define peace as meaning that every demand of the Palestinians must be met so they can create a terrorist state on Israel's borders.

But given Arafat's willingness to use terror after renouncing it and Abbas's refusal to fight terror after committing to do so, most rational people would not trust a peace process that would reward them in any way. Yet that's what Israel's leaders have done.

But worse than this dishonesty employed to pursue policies that were never brought before Israel's public is the gratuitious forfeiting of red lines. If ultimate control over Rafah was merely a negotiating point to delay compromise how seriously will Israeli objections to releasing Barghouti or dealing with a Hamas infested PA government or ceding the city of Maaleh Adumim be treated? Not only has Sharon failed to obtain any (lasting) diplomatic or political capital for his disengagment, he's undermined the negotiating positions of future Israeli governments.

Bret Stephens, late of the Jerusalem Post and currently back at the Wall Street Journal argues in the Ariel Route admires what Sharon is doing:

Not surprisingly, as soon as Mr. Sharon announced his resignation, polls indicated he would win the next election handily and have his pick of coalition partners. Partly this reflects popular admiration for the prime minister's gutsiness, partly disenchantment with his likely rivals. Yet if four months are a long time in America's politics, they are an eternity in Israel's, and the political risk Mr. Sharon runs is real. He has lost the organizational support of the Likud. The country is faced with an extended period of political drift. His ostensible political allies could turn on him. There could be a massive terrorist strike from Gaza.

To all this, Mr. Sharon shrugs in seeming indifference. "I've already been elected twice, and the people of Israel did not put their trust in me just to keep my chair warm," he says. But the prime minister is not indifferent. He has spotted an opening--a moment of political convenience in Israel and diplomatic opportunity abroad--through which he can push through another withdrawal in the West Bank. This time, however, it will not be a full withdrawal, as it was in Gaza; Israel will keep possession of strategic assets, including most of Jerusalem and its satellite cities, while ceding territories that have become strategic liabilities. Whether such a settlement can hold in the long run--Palestinian leaders certainly won't accept it--is an open question. But at least Mr. Sharon will have placed Israelis and Palestinians on opposite sides of a contiguous border.

Whatever happens, Mr. Sharon has now proved himself as the most astute Israeli leader since David Ben-Gurion, the country's founder. So much for hysterical predictions made about him in other newspapers when he was first elected. Rare among politicians, he is a secure man. He may yet bring security to Israel, too.

But as he acknowledges that whatever plan PM Sharon has "...Palestinian leaders certainly won't accept it" he's underestimating the power of the Palestinian veto. If the Palestinians claim that Israel must destroy the city of Maaleh Adumim and expel its residents for there to be peace; that will be parroted by the EU and UN and their syncophants and finally it will become Sec of State Rice's duty to pressure the Israeli government to "compromise" and accept the Palestinian terms.

Deja Vu dissents slightly from Stephens and writes:

It is important to recall that David Ben Gurion was Sharon's mentor. Those versed in Israeli politics cannot but note that, when all said and done, "Kadima" is just an updated version of Ben Gurion's "Mapai." But Ben Gurion famously focused on something that Sharon has not. "The old man" carefully trained future leaders to replace him. Dayan, Peres and Sharon are the most famous of those "youngsters."

I don't know if she meant to draw a larger point here, but it's clear that PM Sharon has not adequately anticipated the future; and it's not just a matter that he's neglected to groom a successor generation.

Rather than dictating the shape of a final settlement, Sharon's recklessness (did I really write that?) has opened Israel to more not less interference and severely weakened Israel's position diplomatically. A skillful opponent could exploit this.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Kadima.Ariel Sharon.