We will read a lot like this.
Sharon is the man of the hour. The image of a hesitant foot-dragger has been replaced by a decisive and determined leader, who has resolved to put an end to the anomaly of a state living without borders in a permanent state of war. Never was a leader forced to make such a daring political breakthrough under such harsh domestic conditions, with such great opposition from within his own camp and from all the crazed Greater Israel adherents
w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m
Last update - 01:51 09/02/2005
Requiem for a referendum
By Yoel Marcus
Yasser Arafat died on November 11, but he was finally buried yesterday at the Sharm summit. At an elegant, focused and businesslike ceremony, the bloody Al-Aqsa intifada, which he sparked, was also interred. A closing celebration would have been preferable to an opening one yesterday.
But from celebration to celebration, ceremony to ceremony, disappointment to disappointment, the leaders of both people came down to earth and realized that force will not work. Pundits will carefully analyze the differing nuances of Sharon and Abu Mazen's speeches, and will split hairs over who meant what. But there is no mistaking the basics: these two old warriors, sworn enemies for dozens of years, have put down their guns and switched to dialogue.
There are a considerable number of people who are ready to swear that hair will grow on the palms of their hands before two states living side by side in peace will result from all this talk. No one ever died because he was a pessimist, but neither did anyone die from trying to follow the path of negotiations and painful concessions.
A distant observer of this ceremony might wonder at Sharon's transformation from the most hated, war-mongering man in the world to a man of peace and hope in the eyes of Europe and America.
But more than anything else, he has been transformed in the eyes of the Arabs into the only Israeli leader who can lead to a permanent agreement.
Sharon is the man of the hour. The image of a hesitant foot-dragger has been replaced by a decisive and determined leader, who has resolved to put an end to the anomaly of a state living without borders in a permanent state of war. Never was a leader forced to make such a daring political breakthrough under such harsh domestic conditions, with such great opposition from within his own camp and from all the crazed Greater Israel adherents.
As Sharon was delivering his speech at Sharm, the slogans were going up on walls in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv: "We killed Rabin, we'll kill you too," and "death to traitors." But just as in 1948, when Ben-Gurion determined the date for the establishment of the state in opposition to his fellow leaders, so Sharon is going against his own camp, but with the majority of the people behind him.
All those who bandied about the argument that a unilateral withdrawal will be viewed by the enemy as retreat under fire, can now eat their hats. It was Sharon's initiative that gave birth to the Sharm summit. And disengagement will take place through consensus and dialogue. If it succeeds, it will be create an opening for more dialogue in the future.
Sharon intends to advance the titanic enterprise that he began in the face of opposition from all those striving to bring him down. It will pass in the cabinet and in the Knesset, and by the end of the year not one Jew will be left in Gaza. In one way, the Sharm summit may have already served him: it produced the death certificate for the referendum plot. |
