Despite conventional wisdom, Sharon
may be able to forge a stable government.
LARRY DERFNER
Israel Correspondent
Jerusalem
10
veryone knew the election last
week would go well for Ariel
Sharon. The advance skepticism
concerned the days after.
Pre-Election Day consensus wisdom had
been that even with a landslide victory under
his belt, Sharon would be unable to rule effec-
tively. The Knesset was just too fractious. His
government would be unstable and fall quick-
ly enough, likely by the end of the year. And
there could be no clearer confirmation of this
view, it seemed, than Binyamin Netanyahu's
decision to pass up what looked certain to be
his landslide victory, not Sharon's, after failing
to force new elections for the Knesset.
But the consensus wisdom may be forced to
wise up. The party people may have been
been onto something after all. Sharon has not
only a viable chance for a stable government,
but numerous options for one. Members of
the Likud and other right-wing and religious
parties are talking very confidently, and with
good reason. Like Sharon, they all say they
want a national unity government with Labor,
but their fall-back position — a right/reli-
gious coalition with backing from a few cen-
trists and mavericks — may well be durable
enough to carry Sharon through Nov. 2,
2003, the date of the next scheduled election.
The natural enemies in such a coalition —
the secular Russian parties and the Sephardi
Orthodox Shas party being the first to come
to mind — are commonly thought to be so at
odds that they could not live together. Yet the
two sides dismiss this notion. They take the
attitude that they have no choice but to iron
out their differences because bringing down
the Sharon government simply isn't an option
for them.
Related editorial: page 31
"The public does not want new elections
again," says Shas Member of Knesset David Tal.
Siding With A Winner
declared the Barak foreign policy a catastro-
phe, and promised to reverse it. Until the
intifada (Arab uprising), Barak built his coali-
tion strategy around one constant — keeping
Sharon away from the peace process, even if it
meant becoming the prisoner of Shas.
Shimon Peres has belittled Sharon's
approach to the Palestinians as an attempt to
"make peace with the Arabs without the
Arabs." So how could Labor and Sharon get
together?
Shlomo Rivlin speaks of setting minimalis-
tic guidelines — no right of return, no divid-
ing sovereignty in Jerusalem, and no with-
drawal from the Jordan Valley — as some-
thing Labor, on the whole, could accept.
"Everybody except [Justice Minister Yossi]
Beilin, maybe [Foreign Minister Shlomo]
Ben-Ami, and maybe [Absorption Minister]
Professor Yuli Tamir," he adds.
This is an understatement. Sharon will be
Israel's fifth prime minister in less than six
years. Any party that turns the political sys-
tem upside down yet again and puts the
country through another season of election
frenzy and enmity will immediately become
Public Enemy No.l. "The parties [in Sharon's
camp] intend for his coalition to last a very
long time," Tal maintains.
"We have no problem with Shas," chimes
Reshaping The Image
in Yuri Stern of the right-wing, Russian
Yisrael Beitenu party.
Forming a government is likely to be Sharon's
Looking down the list of partners in a nar-
easiest task. He clearly has Israel, and the
row coalition, it's hard to find anyone who
Israeli political system, on his side. But
would have an interest in bringing him down,
beyond the country's borders, no one has
considering the political
price to pay. There's
something about a
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62-38 percent elec-
tion win that does
things to people.
voted for him.
Politicians "tend to gravitate" to the winner,
His image is not a positive one. The foreign
says a source close to Sharon, also speaking
media has hardly been able to mention the
with understatement. Such a victory — espe-
word "intifada' without immediately noting
cially with an electorate once assumed to be
that it was "sparked" by Sharon's Sept. 28 visit
split 50-50 — is aferociously bold statement
to the Temple Mount. His name is synony-
of the people's will. Coupled with the Israeli
mous with the Sabra and Shatilla massacre,
public's loathing for the idea of another early
and with the Lebanon War as a whole. He is
election, it makes Sharon's power nearly
the scourge of Arabs, the embodiment of the
unchallengeable.
Israeli warhawk.
Add to this the tabor. Party's broken, head-
Morally, he is considered to be a notch or
less state, and Sharon's evident ability to form
two above Augusto Pinochet, but Sharon is
a government without Labor, and there are
still lumped with the world's bullies. His cam-
strong grounds for the incoming prime minis-
paign as a peacemaker was treated as an
ter getting his wish — a national unity gov-
Orwellian exercise.
ernment.
Sharon has said that one of the first things
The obstacles are ideological. Sharon has
he will do is try to improve Israel's public
pronounced the Oslo Accord — Labor's
standing abroad. Accompanying Sharon to
seven-year project for the transformation of
Israel — to be "non-existent." He has
CHALLENGE on page 26
2/16
2001
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