Sharon must face the people now

There are calls to hold immediate national elections in Israel


from Jewish World Review June 29, 2005 / 22 Sivan, 5765, By Isi Leibler

In light of recent events Prime Minister Sharon must heed the calls to hold national elections. Failure to do so makes a mockery of Israel's parliamentary system.

...the Knesset recently carried three consecutive motions of no confidence against the Government.... Knesset Speaker, Ruby Rivlin, himself a Likud member, publicly urged (Sharon) to ...hold elections.

The nation is now poised at a critical turning point....

At issue are not the merits of ruling over Palestinians or retaining isolated settlements....the majority of Israelis now share a broad consensus that their ultimate objective must be to separate themselves from the Palestinians. Nor is the Gaza disengagement the central issue.

At the heart of the matter are the nation's strategic and national security goals....wide range of respected Israelis ...warn that Sharon's current policies will culminate in a disaster of historic proportions.

In addition to the recent frightening warning conveyed by former Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon, disaster scenarios are also predicted by ...former Mossad heads Ephraim Halevy and Shabtai Shevet, former Intelligence Chief Shlomo Gazit, former IDF Deputy Chief of Staff General Uzi Dayan, and former Air force Commander General Eitan Ben Eliyahu.

....The facts on the ground certainly reinforce the critics who predict that our policies are leading towards disaster. This is what is happening:

• Terror attacks, attempted suicide bombings, and the launching of Kassam rockets continue unabated. Israelis are being killed and the IDF is once again being restrained in order not to undermine the "calm".
• Mahmoud Abbas reiterates that he has no intention of curbing the terrorist infrastructure or curtailing their activities. In fact, he proudly announces that he had invited Hamas ghouls to join his Administration and brazenly enrolls terrorists in the PA police force which Israel is being urged to rearm!
• Like Arafat, Abbas insists that the Arab right of return is non-negotiable. He refuses to take any meaningful steps to rein in the incitement which continues unabated in the schools, the mosques, and the media. When challenged by the Americans and ourselves, he whines that he is too weak to enforce drastic changes and demands further Israeli concessions before he can act.
• There is a general consensus that Hamas is poised to take control of the Palestinian region in the near future.
• PA Ministers have explicitly threatened to unleash Intifada Mark III unless Israel makes further unilateral concessions after disengagement.

The international scene is equally troublesome. Prior to the implementation of disengagement whilst the U.S and Europeans are supposedly "displaying restraint" in order not to create political difficulties for a domestically embattled Sharon:

• The Europeans reinstated ties with the "political" wing of Hamas
• Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the US Administration appear to have reverted to Clintonian even-handedness bordering on moral equivalency in relation to Israel and the Palestinians.
• The US is also pressing Israel to free additional prisoners despite the fact that of the 900 already released, some of whom have already resumed terrorist activities.
• Ms Rice repeatedly reiterates that contrary to what Sharon told Israelis, the purported commitment by President Bush to support Israel's retention of major settlement blocs, is merely a gesture, because it included a caveat that any deviation from the 1949 armistice lines would require Palestinian approval!
• The American Administration continues showering paeans of praise on Abbas despite his explicit refusal to dismantle or hinder the terror infrastructure and whilst even his own Fatah units blatantly continue engaging in suicide bombings and other acts of terror.
  

Yet despite these ominous developments, Sharon defies his advisers and continues extending far reaching concessions to the Palestinians which will impact on our security and only be reversible at the cost of more Israeli blood.

The most frightening concession Sharon is contemplating is to sub-contract policing of the Gaza border to the Egyptians — a guaranteed prescription for a future confrontation. It is surely the ultimate delusion to imagine that any agreement with our Egyptian "friends" to prevent the smuggling of weapons to terrorists can possibly work.

... although elections will not provide a panacea to our problems, they would at least enable Israelis to review their options before rather than after withdrawal.

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JWR contributor Isi Leibler chairs the Diaspora-Israel relations committee of the Jerusalem Center for Public affairs and is a former chairman of the governing board of the World Jewish Congress. Let him know what you think by clicking here.