"Loss of Ariel Sharon"? - Did he die?

[link to www.theage.com.au]



Sharon: what now for Israel?

The loss of Ariel Sharon means upheaval for Israeli politics and the peace process, says Peter Rodgers.

A MIDDLE East without Ariel Sharon's heavyweight presence is suddenly at hand. His removal from the scene may have a profound impact on Israeli domestic politics and may add even more uncertainty to the moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace process. But it will not of itself change the corrosive mindset of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Sharon's decision in mid-November to quit the hardline Likud party and found a new "centrist" party to contest national elections in March has increasingly appeared as a political masterstroke. Recent opinion polls have shown his new party, Kadima, winning possibly one-third of the 120-member Israeli Parliament, well ahead of the Israeli Labour Party, with Likud a miserable third.

Senior figures from both Likud and Labour have shifted their loyalties to Kadima. These include Ehud Olmert, who has temporarily assumed Sharon's prime ministerial powers, former Likud defence minister Shaul Mofaz and veteran Israeli politician Shimon Peres, recently ousted as Labour Party leader.

After Sharon's first, relatively minor stroke in mid-December, The Guardian reported that in many ways Kadima was synonymous with Sharon himself, the new party's mix of egos and ideologies "held together by one factor — the imposing presence of Sharon". Without Sharon, does Kadima have a meaningful future? And who will lead it?

Israeli public opinion gives Olmert little cause for optimism as Sharon's successor. Some might savour the irony of Shimon Peres emerging as leader of the party founded by his former arch rival. But Peres' record of losing elections is probably unmatched in the democratic world. What might be good for Peres is unlikely to be good for the party.

So the big bang Sharon delivered to Israeli politics only months ago could well end as a whimper.

Two people with an acute interest in Sharon's fate, though for quite different reasons, are the newly installed Likud leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, and US President George Bush.

Sharon and Netanyahu were bitter political rivals. Recall Sharon's September 2000 visit to the Temple Mount complex in Jerusalem's Old City, sacred to both Jews and Muslims, which helped ignite the Palestinian uprising and left 5000 Palestinians and Israelis dead. That provocative action was aimed, successfully, at thwarting Netanyahu's political challenge.

Netanyahu has now succeeded as leader of the Likud — a party riven by Sharon's decision to withdraw Israeli settlers from Gaza and gutted by his creation of Kadima. But without Sharon, Likud stalwarts will see the opportunity to turn around the party's fortunes. Because it has been Sharon, not the Labour Party under its new leader, Amir Peretz — who bears an unfortunate resemblance to Stalin — that has been the Likud's major political obstacle.

For George Bush and his Administration, the loss of Sharon from the leadership of Israel is a setback. Sharon was a known quantity who gained international kudos for the withdrawal from Gaza against heated domestic Israeli criticism. Whatever his dubious track record in dealing with the Palestinians, he gave the Americans cause for comfort, not just on the Palestinian question but on the issue of growing concern both to the United States and Israel — a nuclear-armed Iran.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will also have strong reasons to ponder Sharon's exit — not least whether it will restore Israeli politics to its familiar Likud versus Labour format, with a host of minor parties in their shadows. And as much as Israelis have hidden behind the mantra of there being no partner for peace on the Palestinian side, Abbas and his fellow Palestinians might well ask the same question about Israel. However thickly Sharon applied the "peace" cosmetic, he was no convert to a genuine two-state solution to

the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His interest was conflict management, not resolution.

Even without Sharon around,

Abbas faces a problematic future in which there are several critical ingredients.

One is intra-Palestinian violence. According to the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, 385 Palestinians met violent deaths in 2005. More than half were killed by other Palestinians, 113 by Israelis.

This feeds into the second ingredient — the chances of peaceful, democratic elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council later this month.

The third ingredient is the future face of Hamas. One senior Israeli journalist recently wrote that in ad hoc alliance with the moderate left and independents, Hamas will emerge from the elections with an effective veto "over the formation of a new (Palestinian) government".

There will inevitably be great uncertainty at the passing from the political stage of such a major figure on the Israeli-Palestinian scene as Ariel Sharon. But we should remind ourselves that other major players have come and gone.

Israelis and many others welcomed Yasser Arafat's departure a little more than a year ago with ill-disguised enthusiasm. They have been disappointed.

Anyone seeing Sharon's exit as breaking the logjam will share a similar disappointment, for the problem is not one of recalcitrant individuals. The problem is how millions of Israelis and millions of Palestinians have grown up believing that the other has no legitimate place on the landscape.