Middle East
Israel's Elections: Diminishing Returns
Will Victory Turn into a Nightmare?
A week has passed since we lined up in front of the ballot boxes to cast our votes. The media—which until a week ago brainwashed us with predictions about “what’s best for us”—have failed. Now, analysts have to accept the fact that the people have chosen. What the nation needs is a fortified stance. The people of Israel overwhelmingly elected representatives who are loyal to a sovereign Jewish state.
Let our incessant political analysts say what they may. Let them explain in a thousand different ways what stands behind the demise of the left. But even the intelligent among them can’t argue with the facts.
Something odd has happened that has never happened before in our political system. Most people, including those who wavered until the last minute, have said their piece. But those who won the elections became frightened by their victory. As soon as the power was handed to them on a silver platter and they got the people’s trust, they began to hesitate. Suddenly we discover that not only are the winners scared—they are shaking with fear.
The people said Sharon! Not only that: The people gave their trust to [Ariel] Sharon for the second time. The first time was two years ago, when they voted [prime minister and Labor leader] Ehud Barak out of office. Now they have voted for Sharon again, despite the scare tactics that the left used during the election campaign, despite the christening of Sharon as the “head of a mafia family” and other inappropriate labels that were given to the man destined to become the prime minister of the Jewish state.
The weakness of this writer is to cut and keep newspaper clippings. In one of my files from 2001, I found an interview that Sharon granted The New Yorker during his election campaign against then-Prime Minister Barak. In the article, Sharon laid out his political and national security policies.
It seemed that compared to “Arik” (back then, Sharon was still called by this nickname), Rehavam Ze’evi [the far-right politician and tourism minister in Sharon’s first Cabinet, who was assassinated on Oct. 17, 2001, by Palestinian gunmen] and Avigdor Lieberman [of the ultra-right bloc National Unity-Israel Beiteinu and a minister in Sharon’s first Cabinet] were moderates.
Sharon was quoted as saying: “[Palestinian leader Yasser] Arafat is a killer, a bitter enemy who must be rooted out of the region. There is no way to reach an agreement with him, even if he arrives at the negotiations on a tractor with his little girl sitting beside him. There is no place for a Palestinian state and for negotiating under fire.”
Two years ago, this “real” Sharon was elected to lead the government, despite the low number of seats his party received, which then was almost equal to the seats gained by [the ultra-Orthodox] Shas party.
Sharon’s change of heart began [in 1982, while he was defense minister] with the evacuation of Yamit [a Jewish settlement in the Sinai, which the Israeli government forcibly evacuated in April 1982, in accordance with the peace agreement signed with Egypt in 1979—WPR]; it continued with the signing of the Wye agreement [in October 1998 between Arafat and Binyamin Netanyahu], which specified Israel’s withdrawal from 13 percent of Judea and Samaria; and it ended with Sharon’s recent declaration that he would be willing to accept painful concessions, including the recognition of a Palestinian state.
Even so, that hasn’t prevented this wise nation from once again handing Sharon a victory. The people know that this will be his last term, and they recognize the human weakness of the leader, who would like to go down in history much like those who received Nobel Peace Prizes. In addition, Sharon wants to clear his name, which has been tarnished during his years in the political limelight.
The danger that accompanies Sharon’s unprecedented victory lies in the tiresome and shameful coalition talks that we are witnessing. We have suffered from negotiations like these before. They have paralyzed the country.
They only took place because of narrow political interests and did not represent the will of the people. We’ve suffered their consequences during the years that brought us Oslo [peace agreements signed in 1993]; Camp David [peace accords signed in 2000]; Taba [in 1988, Israel relinquished Taba, an Israeli resort in the Sinai, to Egypt—WPR]; and the current social and economic collapse.
The real battle of the 2003 elections started on the night of the elections. In the next few days, Sharon will do everything in his power to bring back into his coalition those who can help him fulfill his aspirations: to enter the history books as a supreme winner.
From his personal experience, Sharon knows that the average Israeli politician neither possesses parliamentary discipline nor adheres to strict loyalty to his party. We have already witnessed many cases where those who had left their party clashed later with their colleagues who had stayed behind.
Sharon might be keeping the cards close to his chest, but the question is whether among those cards he’ll find somebody who will help him realize his victorious dream without turning it into a nightmare. This is Sharon’s last chance. Because soon, there won’t be anybody left who can help him fulfill that dream.
