Soccer Dad: Short sighted

January 5, 2006

Short sighted

No doubt in the next few days PM Ariel Sharon's political obituary will be written. The standard approach will be to praise him for his courage in withdrawing Israeli citizens from Gaza and, generally, "growing" in office. There will be two factors, though, that these praises will overlook.

In 1995, shortly after the Oslo II agreements had been approved by the Knesset (IIRC), Yechiel Leiter spoke in Baltimore. Leiter made an important point. He praised America's founders for requiring super-majorities to approve treaties. He said that something that could change a nation's character so substantially should have greater support else it was likely to be extremely divisive.

Yes, some could say that Leiter was against any territorial compromise and his view on this subject wasn't exactly unbiased. But in a political sense he is most certainly right. What if Rabin hadn't moved ahead with Oslo II when it was clear he didn't have the votes but instead worked to convince the country that Oslo II was necessary? Would the atmosphere have been so poisoned?

Instead he bribed two members of Tzomet to leave their party and join him to make sure that Oslo II passed regardless of the misgivings of about half of the country.

Ofer Haivry writing for the editors of Azure noted that a number of Israeli governments including Menachem Begin's carried out policies that were opposed by those governments in their campaigns. Haivry saw this as a failure of these governments to be accountable for their actions. His critique is just as applicable to PM Sharon whose extremely effective ads against Amram Mitzna were used against him in the run-up to disengagement.

Sharon has failed to communicate the reasons for disengagement or the reasons for continuing disengagements in face of terrorists exploiting their new territory to launch more attacks against Israel. It's not just those of us who are skeptical of unilateral disengagement who should lament this failure; but those who support it. Steamrolling his opposition was how Sharon implemented the first disengagement; now that he's out of the picture for the near future it's not at all clear that there is anyone else who is capable of doing the same. Whereas, had Sharon been willing to take the time to build a clear national consensus his presence would not be necessary for continuing disengagement.

Yes, I know that polls so far show that Kadima is projected to become the dominant mainstream party in Israel, but even without PM Sharon's stroke, I have doubts that it would have continued to be so until the election. But even if my assessment is wrong consider this: What if after disengagement, PM Sharon said that until the Palestinians get their political act together there will be no more withdrawals and Olmert responded by starting his own party would that party have become the dominant "moderate" "mainstream" party? No. The support of Kadima is support for Sharon not of his policies. Israel has not changed that drastically since 2003. There is no one waiting in the wings who will be able to sell further disengagements effectively at this time.

(Israel will withdraw from more land. It will happen. And it will happen even if "hardliner" Bibi Netanyahu is elected PM. It will just not happen as quickly.)

And this brings me to PM Sharon's other failure: to prepare for succession properly. As Deja Vu recalls an earlier post, Second thoughts on Sharon and Israel:

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."

Not only is their an absence of a program for Kadima, there is an absence of leadership after Sharon. PM Sharon's tactics served him well as long as he was PM but they leave his party and his supporters at a disadvantage in his absence.

Technorati Tags: Ariel Sharon, stroke.