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CHALLENGE from page 23

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meet with residents in Gilo on
Election Day, Jerusalem Mayor Ehud
Olmert said there are precedents for
changing the image of a hawkish
Israeli leader.
"When Menachem Begin came in,
the same sorts of things were said
about him as are being said about
Sharon, but he made the peace with
Egypt," Olmert notes.
The issue of how to- remake Sharon's
image is intimately tied to what his ulti-
mate obstacle is likely .to be — making
peace with the Palestinians, which means,
in Sharon's terms, neutralizing their threat
of violence. A peace of deterrence.
While Sharon has given fairly strong
indications that he will not uproot any
settlements, Likud MK Yuval Steinitz
says he's convinced Sharon will adopt a

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HOLD THE STEAK from page 25

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become a vegetarian." Israel's armor was
further pierced when Bill Clinton became
the first president in U.S. history to sug-
gest that Jerusalem be divided. "The
Palestinians saw this as a huge victory,"
Rosenne argues, "and it only encouraged
them further to continue their strategy of
using violence to gain concessions."
So, will Ariel Sharon confront
Palestinian violence with Israeli might?
No orie — including Sharon — has
come out and told the world what the
man, who many fear because of his
reputation as a hard-fisted warrior, will
do to answer Palestinian attacks.
Rosenne did assert, however, that it's
important to remind the media and
Jewish community that it was Sharon
who carried out the final stage of
Israel's gut-wrenching evacuation of

policy of doing just that with some of
the smaller, isolated settlements in the
interior of the West Bank, and incor-
porate them into larger settlement
blocs. Steinitz thinks Sharon intends to
hold on to the Jordan Valley, and the
Judean. and Samarian hills, but in
between he would be willing to move
settlements for the sake of a peaceable
arrangement with the Palestinians.
Sharon has until March 30 to form a
government, but he must sew things up
well before that date because on March
31, his government must pass the overdue
2001 budget or — guess what? — new
elections for both prime minister and
Knesset will automatically be scheduled.
This, is the Doomsday Option. All
bets are that Sharon will be sitting
snugly in the prime minister's saddle
atop a government, big or small, in
due course. 111

Sinai, as part of its peace agreement
with Egypt. It was Sharon who helped
negotiate the peace accord with Jordan
that was scored by some for being too
generous, and Sharon who helped
finalize the Wye Accords, amid a hail
of criticism from the right.
So Sharon.does know how to nego-
tiate and when to close a deal.
But, Rosenne reiterated, Sharon will
not begin discussions from where
Barak left off, as Arafat demands. He
believes Barak went way too far, and
that anyway, those offers disappeared
when both Barak and Clinton left
their respective offices.
And, Rosenne asserts, Sharon will
surely not negotiate, or even lift up a
phone to Arafat, while attacks emanat-
ing from the territories are being per-
petrated. against Israel.
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SHOOTING STAR from page 25

sidered a major weakness of the peace
process: the focus on interim agreements
under which Israel gradually surrendered
its bargaining chips without having an
idea of the Palestinian end game.
After becoming prime minister, Barak
refused to implement the remaining
withdrawals demanded of Israel, and
instead sought to go straight to a final
agreement, even if it entailed deeper
Israeli concessions.
While that final agreement proved
beyond his grasp, Barak — unlike even
his predecessor, the Likud's Binyamin
Netanyahu — did not turn over even
one acre of land to Palestinian control.
The major concessions Barak reported-

ly was willing to offer — dividing
Jerusalem, giving the Palestinians
unprecedented control of the Temple
Mount, relinquishing virtually all the
land Israel won in the 1967 Six-Day War
— destroyed many of Israel's sacred cows
of the last three decades. They seem like-
ly to set the parameters of Israeli political
debate in the coming years.
Because of the concessions he was
willing to make, Barak restored for
most Israelis a belief in the justness of
their cause, a belief that war truly was
not responsible for recent violence.
That's no small feat, given Israelis'
remarkable penchant for self-flagellation.
If war comes on Sharon's watch, it's far
from clear that it will find Israel with
such unity of purpose. ❑

