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Life After Ariel Sharon
New York Times
Editorial
January 6, 2006
When Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced two months
ago that he was leaving the right-wing Likud Party,
which he had embodied for three decades, one thing
seemed certain: his new centrist party, Kadima,
would be far more about one man - himself - than
any one idea.
It's possible that this could even have worked for
a time. Mr. Sharon struck such a powerful chord
with the Israelis' craving for security and stability
that he might well have been able to bulldoze his
people into the future as he saw it. But Mr. Sharon's
massive second stroke means that both Kadima and
what passes for the Israeli political center must
now find a political vision that revolves around
more than just Ariel Sharon.
With Mr. Sharon not expected to return to the helm,
the Israeli people could still have three clear
choices. Mr. Sharon's old Likud Party, now headed
by Benjamin Netanyahu, represents the same old Likud
way: inflaming Palestinian tensions through war
and continuing settlements on Palestinian land in
the West Bank.
The Labor Party, with its new leader, Amir Peretz,
represents the Labor way: negotiations with the
Palestinians.
Unfortunately, the failure of the Oslo accords and
the Palestinians' own inability to rein in their
self-defeating attacks on Israel have understandably
left many Israelis with little appetite for more
talk. The president of the Palestinian Authority,
Mahmoud Abbas, and his ruling Fatah Party seem ill
equipped even to hold proper local elections, let
alone negotiate a peace deal.
But what, then, is the third way that Kadima could
theoretically represent? The vision pushed forward
by Mr. Sharon for the past year has been built around
the central tenet of separation: the idea that the
Israelis can't live with the Palestinians, so they
will separate from the Palestinians and build a
wall to make the separation visible and permanent.
Mr. Sharon looked at the demographics of his country
and came to the conclusion that the only way to
keep Israel a Jewish state was to detach it physically,
wherever possible, from the Palestinians. Toward
that end, he faced down the relatively small number
of Israeli settlers in Gaza and carried out the
country's first unilateral withdrawal from land
that Palestinians claimed for their future state.
That Sharon approach, for which the combative prime
minister won the enthusiastic backing of President
Bush, called for less confrontation than the one
offered by Likud, and less talk than proposed by
Labor. It didn't depend much on whether the Palestinians
ever got their act together - something they appear
bent on proving themselves incapable of doing.
It is possible that Kadima, with Mr. Sharon's deputy,
Ehud Olmert, likely to be at the helm, can cast
itself as a new centrist alternative to Labor and
Likud. But Mr. Olmert, while a respected politician
who helped formulate the Sharon doctrine of unilateral
withdrawal from Gaza, has neither the stature nor
the popularity of Ariel Sharon. So while Mr. Sharon
would probably have been able to carry Israel on
the back of his own charisma and appeal, Mr. Olmert
is likely to have to rely instead on the appeal
of Kadima's vision.
That vision cannot be one that relies solely on
unilateral separation. For a centrist way to work,
there has to be a vision that also encompasses the
steps necessary to eventually end the seemingly
never-ending conflict with the Palestinians, including
a complete enough withdrawal from the West Bank
to give the Palestinians a workable state. It would
secure Mr. Sharon's place in history if the centrist
party he founded somehow managed to turn his vision
of separation into one of a just and lasting peace.
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