Amid Terrible News, Sharon Wins the Likud Nomination

A Weekly Briefing on Israeli and Middle Eastern Affairs  November 29, 2002

Dr. Eran Lerman

Director Israel/Middle East Office

Yesterday was a black day, among the worst in memory, even by the unbearable standards of this war. Two new thresholds have been crossed:

·        The first major attack by Al-Qaeda (apparently) on Israeli targets. Only by a near miss did this not claim more than 300 lives aboard the Arkia plane, which was targeted by SA-7 shoulder-fired missiles, at the same time that the “Paradise” Hotel was bombed;

·        The first direct assault on participants in Israel’s democratic process, Likud voters in the party branch in Beit She’an.

            During the morning came the news of the carnage in Mombassa, with nine Kenyans and three Israelis murdered—including two children, two brothers, once again; this time, the young victims were Dvir and Noy Anter, 13 and 12, of Ariel, in Samaria, whose parents wanted to give them a fine holiday away from the madness of war. One hopes that this makes the great poet Paulin, whom the English Department at Harvard insisted on inviting, sufficiently happy: After all, he called for “settlers” to be hunted down like mad dogs.

            A very different poet, our own Yehuda Amichai, wrote in his “Now in the Storm” (translated by Warren Bargad):

                        Now, in the storm before the calm,

                        I can tell you things I

                        Couldn’t in the calm before the storm,

                        for we’d have been overheard and found out…

                        You see, we met in a well-defended spot, at the

                        point where history began; a quiet place,

                        free of hurried events.

                        And the voice began telling its story that evening,

                        by the children’s bed.

What makes life so difficult for us at such times is that the vivid shadow of that older horror—implicit in his first stanza about being “found out”—comes back at us from all directions; there are no “well-defended,” unhurried places anymore; and tomorrow, for another one of us, the children’s bed might be empty.

            Then came the news from Beit She’an, where two Fatah terrorists opened fire inside the Likud branch, while voters were there to cast their ballots in the primaries. Members of Arafat’s own organization, they were obviously trying to drive home his implicit message, recently made quite explicit by Muhammad Dahlan: Expect us to keep on killing you, until you vote for the Israeli politicians we want. Six died, until a soldier passing by charged in and shot the killers. Among the wounded are three of former Foreign Minister David Levi’s sons—one of them badly.

            Amid all this, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who many saw, not so long ago, as a short-term transitional figure, secured his party’s nomination to lead in the next Knesset elections and retain his position as the nation’s head. The turnout, despite his (much-criticized) call to keep on voting, was relatively low—46 percent—which was supposed to help Netanyahu with his hard core of committed supporters; but in the end, the margin was 55 percent to 40 percent—with a few percentage points going to a far-right candidate—not as high as the recent polls had indicated (some spoke of a wipeout, which would end Bibi’s career), but firm enough to give Sharon unprecedented power within the party. The general assumption is that he will go on to double the size of Likud in the Knesset, and return as prime minister; he will be the first to do so since Shamir was reelected in 1988.

As was the case in Amram Mitzna’s victory in the Labor Party leadership primaries, this does not necessarily reflect a preference among Likud members for Sharon’s policies over Netanyahu’s more strident rhetoric. Two personal considerations were at work, which have little to do with the issues:

1. Sharon ultimately came across—for all his well-known faults—as a decisive yet responsible and cautious man, old and experienced, who does not get dragged into boasting matches about achievements, or makes promises he cannot deliver on. (He chose, wisely, to avoid a televised debate; it was not appropriate, his people pointed out, for a prime minister to debate his own foreign minister.) Bibi, on the other hand, veered sharply—too sharply—from his initial tack of “the economy, stupid” into a focused campaign presenting Sharon as a dangerous leftist, willing to join with Mitzna and give the Palestinians a state they do not deserve. It was too obvious, and it did not work.
2. A more favorable aspect, used now by Netanyahu spin doctors, is that many Likud voters saw Sharon as a “package deal,” with Shaul Mofaz as Defense Minister and Netanyahu, the ultimate hasbara (public relations) man, at the ministry of foreign affairs, waiting for his turn to come; whereas a vote for Netanyahu would have left the two others out, and weakened the party. This is useful for Netanyahu, who has already “reported for duty” and buried the hatchet; it may also be true for many in Likud.

            Still, a substantive element did play a role in these primaries, which in all likelihood determined who would lead Israel in the near future. Netanyahu’s campaign against Sharon on the Palestinian issue simply did not work. Indeed, within his team—now that they are free to speak of what has caused his failure, when a year ago he was universally assumed to be the master of the party—it is generally recognized that his downfall can be traced back to the ugly scenes on May 12, 2002, when he used this very issue to humiliate Sharon in the Likud Center. Sharon, who stood before the Center and refused to rule out a Palestinian state as part of a future process (once terrorism is defeated, and Arafat is out) lost the vote then, but emerged as a statesman; for Netanyahu, this proved to have been a Pyrrhic victory. 

            This is not because Likud members are in favor of a Palestinian state; most, when asked, say they are not. They do, however, sense that it would be wrong to undermine the unique relationship which has been painstakingly built between Sharon and President Bush—even if the two leaders’ understanding is based on the latter’s outline, which includes a provisional Palestinian state at a relatively early stage. As it happens, Bush’s willingness to consider an aid and loan guarantees package for Israel (side by side with packages for Jordan and Turkey, other key players in the coming struggle to destroy Saddam’s regime) came across, perhaps intentionally, as a sign of support: In terms of the global war we’re in, the U.S. administration does look at the current Israeli leadership as a responsible (and responsive) ally.

            It would be folly for the Labor Party to ignore this new reality, an important analyst (all the more significant for being openly left-wing), Hemi Shalev, warned today in Ma’ariv. When Ehud Barak, just recently, warned Mitzna and his men not to try to “resell” Arafat to the Americans, Mitzna simply dismissed Barak as “irrelevant”; but he was wrong to do so. Side by side with the “road map,” and despite disagreements over the settlements, there is a basic affinity between outlooks.

            “In the American media, as in Israel,” writes Shalev, “there is an endless flow of reporting about the exploits of Islamic terror organizations, in this case Bin Ladin, and about an Arab leader, a personification of evil, in this case Saddam Hussein. The black-and-white outlook of Sharon and the Israeli right is much more naturally accepted in America today than the complex world picture, in shades of grey, of the Labor Party and the Israeli left.”