Sharon Tripped Up By His Own Party
The Age
Tuesday May 14, 2002
Israel's Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, has publicly cast the chairman of the Palestinian Authority, Yasser Arafat, as his enemy No. 1. If Mr Sharon loses his grip on power, however, it is much more likely to be because of manoeuvrings within his own Likud party by his rival, the former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. On Sunday the Likud central committee overwhelmingly voted in favor of a resolution, supported by Mr Netanyahu, that declared ``No Palestinian state will be created west of the Jordan." In other words, the party has emphatically repudiated the idea of partitioning the former mandate territory of Palestine into separate Arab and Jewish states, which has provided the basis for every attempt to reach a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the original United Nations plan in 1947 to the recent proposal by Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. The resolution does not formally bind the Sharon Government, but in the immediate context its effect can only be to undermine Mr Sharon's credibility as Israel and its neighbors prepare for a conference intended to revive the search for peace in the Middle East. In the longer term, the Likud vote suggests that the leaders of one of Israel's main political parties would rather live with a permanent state of war than deal with the Palestinian people on a basis of equality.
Even if this is only a rhetorical position, adopted in order to strengthen Mr Netanyahu's hand in his bid to regain the prime ministership, it is a deceptive and malicious one. Although opposition to a Palestinian state is a traditional Likud position, it is not an option for any Israeli government that hopes eventually to be able to reach a settlement with the Palestinians. And all Israeli governments surely must retain that hope, for without such a settlement Israelis will not find the secure existence within guaranteed borders that has so far eluded them. To say this is not to condone terrorism, or to deny Israel's right to take military action against those who threaten her. It is simply to recognise that the Palestinians will never accept a solution that removes from them any prospect of building their own state in at least part of their historic homeland, any more than Israelis could be expected to accept a solution that involved dismantling the state of Israel and abandoning the dreams of its Zionist pioneers. The notion, sometimes favoured in Likud circles, that Jordan might be an alternative Palestinian state, is a fantasy, not least because the Jordanians would never agree to it.
Mr Sharon has on several occasions accepted that there should be a Palestinian state, although he has avoided being specific about its shape. It is a sad comment on Israeli politics that this Prime Minister, long a hero of right-wing hardliners, now seems more realistic than his challenger Mr Netanyahu, who has moved even further to the right.
© 2002 The Age
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