The Election of Ariel Sharon as Israel’s New Prime Minister

 

Ariel Sharon: “Bulldozer” or Gravedigger?

 

By Shahid Bolsen

"Their enmity among themselves is very great. You would think they were united, but their hearts are divided." Surat-Al-Hashr, Ayah 14.

In considering what impact the election of Ariel Sharon as prime minister of Israel will have on the situation in occupied Palestine, it is important to remember that Zionist designs have developed very little over the last 50 years, and are not likely to undergo any substantive alteration now.

A quote from former Defense Minister Ephiram Sneh early in the al-Aqsa intifada candidly spelled out Israel’s approach. Through the use of force and closures, the government would “shape the reality” without negotiation into “what we would like to achieve through agreement.” That is, Israel would impose its vision of apartheid on the Palestinian territories rather than implement it through the compliance of the willing but slow-moving PA.

The “peace plan” offered by Ehud Barak was identical to Ariel Sharon’s “peace plan” of 1981: approximately 40 percent of the West Bank under Palestinian administration, cripplingly divided by Jewish settlements and by-pass roads, which would remain intact.

It has been learned that Barak offered Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat considerably more than this at Camp David, but included a condition that Arafat declare the remaining Palestinian grievances null and void, to declare the conflict over. Arafat’s rejection of this condition, arguably the only legitimately patriotic decision he ever made throughout the entire Oslo peace process, was portrayed as a rejection of Barak’s generosity, and a sign that the Palestinians did not want “peace.”

Given the long historical context of the Israeli agenda, it is a quickly reached conclusion that Barak offered 90 percent of the West Bank and a shared Jerusalem precisely because he was attaching a condition that he knew would cause the offer to be rejected. This rejection allowed him the freedom to implement the Sharon plan through violence, without facing meaningful international criticism.

Thus, it is clear that the only plan that has ever been offered by the Israelis, for at least the last 30 years, remains the plan today.

We can only partially conclude that the Israeli people decided that Ariel Sharon would be more capable of implementing this apartheid policy than Ehud Barak, not because there is any question that he will be more effective, he certainly will be, but because we cannot responsibly conclude that this was the reason for his election.

Little needs to be said about what Sharon will do. Back in late November authorities from the IDF predicted that their operations against the Palestinians would continue until at least the middle of 2001. This was predicted after Ehud Barak saw the dissolution of his coalition government and had been courting Sharon to form a unity government.

In other words, the accuracy of this prediction did not depend upon who would sit in the prime minister’s chair, since by the time the prediction was made, control of the government appeared to be up for grabs. The operations are part of the implementation of a long-held and long-term plan independent of individual political personalities. Most everyone is in agreement that Sharon will continue the violence, the closures, the economic strangulation, land confiscation, and so on, of his predecessor; who was, after all, enforcing elements of Sharon’s own plan. With comparisons already being made to Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle, it is not inconceivable that before his tenure as prime minister ends, Sharon will be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Headline: War Criminal Redeemed by Historic Peace Deal.

More useful to examine, however, are the other reasons Sharon was elected, or more precisely, why Barak was not re-elected, because they expose the deep fissures in Israel, which continue to erode its viability.

Sharon beat Barak by a margin of approximately 20 percent, Barak earning 40 percent of the ballots to Sharon’s 60 percent. It should be kept in mind that only a little over half of the Israeli electorate turned up to vote at all, the lowest turnout in Israel’s history. Thus Sharon’s margin of victory represents only about a quarter of all Israelis. Extremist Jewish settlers constitute around 15 percent of the Israeli population, and we can easily conclude that they voted overwhelmingly for Sharon. The total, in fact, of those who classify themselves in Israel as ultra-Orthodox is approximately 20 percent, and their representatives actively supported Ariel Sharon against Barak, while expressing their personal distaste for Sharon’s secularism.

These, combined with the enormous number of Israelis who did not vote at all, or who submitted blank ballots, are the numbers worth analyzing. That the Palestinians living inside Israel largely boycotted the polls has been pointed to as a reason for Barak’s defeat. However, the fact that nearly half of the Israeli electorate boycotted this election, but largely voted in the Netanyahu-Barak race, must be considered far more influential.

Why did almost 3 million Israelis abstain from voting?

According to Ha’aretz, the Israeli daily, more than 40 percent of all Israelis viewed education spending and other social issues as higher priorities in judging the candidates than “security” or the “peace process.” That is exactly the percentage of the Israeli populace that did not vote. Neither Barak nor Sharon ran on a platform of funding for education. If it needs be said, neither did they run on issues of social welfare, unemployment, healthcare or economic reform. Both candidates centered their campaigns on “security” and “peace,” which simply do not resonate with average Israeli citizens who are generally poorer, less likely to be employed, and less healthy than they used to be.

Both Barak’s Labor and Sharon’s Likud parties believe in small government when it comes to provision of domestic services. Under Barak, and Netanyahu before him, Israel has been moving toward full inclusion in the globalization process. In short, this means, less state involvement in labor issues, less social spending, and the creation of an economy that is free and open to foreign investors. Foreign investors, i.e. foreign employers, don’t generally favor unionization of their workers, and Israel’s once powerful Histradut labor union has been effectively neutralized as a guarantor of workers’ rights.

These are problems that are more real and meaningful to the average Israeli than the paper tiger of the Palestinian intifada. It is a given that the 351 murdered Palestinians are of little concern for most Israelis, but it is also a given that most Israelis can deduce from that figure that the Palestinians pose no authentic danger to their domestic security. One can recall a special aired on CNN in October, during the fiercest weeks of the Zionist atrocities. A reporter asked an Israeli student if he feared for his life because of the crisis, and the student, calmly sipping a latte at a beachside café, obediently, if unconvincingly, replied, “Yes, of course, I am scared to death.”

But “there are 850,000 Israelis who suffer, today, from poverty. Most of them are children,” New York’sJewish Post lamented a few months ago. “The state has reduced its involvement in supplying services: Education, Health, Housing, and Absorption of Olim [Zionist immigrants]. The Israeli national medical insurance does not cover any person 100 percent. So people must buy private medical insurance in order to be on the safe side… many parents have to hire private teachers because the quality of the class has declined.”

The two prime ministerial candidates ignored these issues and, consequently, the people to whom these issues matter ignored the candidates.

What is highlighted by the election of Sharon, essentially, is the fragmentation of Israeli society; between the rabidly extremist settlers and ultra-Orthodox Jews, who obsess upon “security” and relations with the Palestinians, Lebanon, and Syria; and the rest of the population that basically doesn’t care about the Palestinians or anyone else, that is intrinsically self-centered and indifferent like almost every other middle-and lower-class community anywhere else in the world.

When the concerns of half the population of a country are ignored, and the government is elected by a margin composed of the most extreme and unrealistic elements in the society, the fundamental national cohesion necessary for a state to function, particularly a state as unlikely as Israel, has disappeared.

This internal disintegration should be the central focus of American Muslim activism since the gradual domestic collapse of Israeli society, of course, can only be good for Palestinians in the long run. Though this good comes at a horrific cost to Palestinian society, such as it is, through Israel’s increased emphasis on disproportionate militarization and subsequent provocation of conflict, the greater the extent to which the Israeli government ignores its cancerous domestic strife, the more vulnerable Israel will become.

Contrary to all expectations, then, Sharon “the Bulldozer” may well dig the grave of the floundering Zionist experiment himself.

Shahid Bolsen is a free-lance writer and director of IANARadionet.com, an Islamic news and information Web site.

 

SIDEBAR 1

ARIEL SHARON—In His Own Words

“No one will touch Judea and Samaria [the occupied West Bank]! Or Gaza either! They belong to us. They have been ours for thousands of years, eternally.”

“I am for the expulsion of anyone who throws a stone in the occupied territories.”

“I never accepted the Oslo agreement as it was.”

“After all, I am known as someone who eats Arabs for breakfast. This is baseless.”

“Yasser Arafat is a murderer and a liar... He's an enemy. He's a bitter enemy.”

“Even when an Arab is on the Mount, his back is to it. Also some of his lower parts.”

“I've always been a moderate.”

—Compiled by ADC