Sharon the Warhorse pushes for withdrawal from Gaza

Here’s historical irony for you. The Israeli leader most known for his aggressive, militaristic stance in regard to dealing with the Palestinians may lose his job over his plan for Israel to unilaterally withdraw from the Gaza Strip. For most of his life, Ariel Sharon has been identified as a “hardliner’s hardliner”. A former paratroop commander, he fought in all of Israel’s major wars--1948, 1956, 1967, 1973--and as Defense Minister in 1982 was the architect of Israel’s controversial and costly invasion of Lebanon.

When the Israelis picked Sharon as their Prime Minister in early 2001, it was seen as a reaction to the bloody wave of suicide bombings against Israel, and a rejection of negotiated peace with the Palestinians. But since taking office, Sharon has gradually come to stand for withdrawal--unilaterally, if necessary--from the occupied territories and hunkering down behind a formidable ‘security fence’. He and his supporters see this as the only practical way of achieving a workable peace.

The centerpiece of Sharon’s plans is a unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, but many of his former allies in Israel’s conservative Likud Party do not see eye-to-eye on this approach at all. To many “Likudniks”, Ariel Sharon has betrayed the cause and is only playing into the hands of the terrorists. To them, withdrawal is a sign of weakness and a policy that rewards the suicide bombers.

After being shouted down on Sunday by members of his own party who are in virtual mutiny against him, Sharon presented a revised Gaza withdrawal plan to Likud legislators at Parliament in a closed-door session. The revised plan varies slightly from the original, implementing the withdrawal from Gaza in four stages and destroying most of the buildings in Israeli settlements, rather than leaving them for Palestinians to occupy. The first dismantling of three small settlements will probably not occur until March of 2005.

The revised plan, however, only varies slightly from the proposal that was voted down just a few weeks ago at the beginning of May. Sharon is willing to compromise at the margins, but is committed to the withdrawal plan even though threatened by the possibility of early parliamentary elections which could remove him from power if enough Likudniks were to vote against him.

A new public opinion poll has bolstered Sharon’s hand a bit, however, giving him a little more leverage as he negotiates with the rebellious legislators. According to poll released yesterday by the Maariv Daily, 55 percent of Israelis back Sharon’s plan, while only 32 percent support a rival plan proposed by Benjamin Netanyahu. And of conservative, Likud-aligned Israelis, Sharon garners an almost identical 54 percent support against Netanyahu’s 32 percent. Netanyahu, a former Prime Minister himself, is Sharon’s main rival in the Likud Party and is leading the opposition to his withdrawal plans.

Yosef Lapid, Israel’s Justice Minister, is trying to hold the Likud coalition together by brokering a mutually acceptable compromise between Sharon and the Netanyahu faction. If some kind of solution is not found, Israel’s parliamentary system allows such a standoff to result in a collapse (i.e. disbanding and reshuffling) of the Likud-led government. “I am trying to prevent a split in the Likud and the fall of the government,” said Lapid in a recent interview.

And so, the fate of the old warhorse Sharon hangs in the balance as he tries to find a way to extricate Israel from Gaza and set the stage for a secure Israel. His critics on the right claim that unilaterally giving up land taken in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war would be rewarding terrorism, and a strategic defeat. Supporters of the Sharon plan maintain that subjecting the entire country of Israel to the threat of sudden death by suicide bombers is too high a price to pay for the protection of 7,500 settlers in the Gaza Strip.

T.T.

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