The Likud's hollow decision
Ha'aretz Editorial
Tuesday, May 14, 2002 Sivan 3, 5762 Israel Time: 07:37 (GMT+3)
The Likud's decision, initiated by Benjamin Netanyahu, to oppose a Palestinian state, was a hollow, harmful political show. It is regrettable that such an important political party, whose chairman is a sitting prime minister, and which formulated the government's guidelines, was dragged into what Netanyahu himself described as "vulgar tricks," making such an anachronistic and irrelevant decision, which won't stand up to the test of reality for any government.
The Likud's decision contradicts the policies and actions of all prime ministers until now. Netanyahu himself promised, when elected as prime minister in 1996, to implement the Oslo Accords. During his brief tenure in office, he signed the Wye River Plantation accords, and his government ordered the partial evacuation of Hebron. During his term in office, the Knesset passed the Golan Law, and the Third Way party, which made annexation of the Golan its sole political platform, supported him, not Shimon Peres, because Netanyahu promised Third Way's leaders he would never give up the Heights. Only at the end of his term was it revealed that he tried negotiating with Syria, and even was apparently ready for far-reaching concessions.
The person who exposed Netanyahu's attempts at negotiations with Syria was none other than his opponent, Ariel Sharon, who attacked the Likud government at the time from the right, as was his wont until he became prime minister. It was Sharon who attacked then prime minster Yitzhak Shamir for going to the Madrid summit conference, and it was Sharon who sabotaged the 1990 Likud Central Committee meeting when he grabbed the microphone to shout "Who's in favor of eliminating terror?" to disrupt a vote. Now, as a prime minister committed to responsibility and a political horizon (or sadly, only presenting the image of a political horizon), he's adopted a different, somewhat more ambiguous tone. Sharon asked his party's Central Committee not to debate a Palestinian state at this time, lest it harm ongoing political processes, and asked the committee to "allow the government to do its work." The Central Committee did not support him. Sixty percent of its members voted against him.
Netanyahu used Sharon's own weapons against the prime minister, but it is doubtful whether he gained much from his victory. The former prime minister, who was thrown out of office in disgrace, returned to using his battered marketing gimmicks, tried horrifying his listeners with nonsensical theories about a hostile Palestinian state that would damage Israel's infrastructures and dry up its water resources, and manipulated the audience with a long list of embarrassingly shallow tricks. Sharon responded with a speech laced with personal barbs, mostly referring to Netanyahu's seeming betrayal of the former premier's principles. But there was no leadership in Sharon's speech.
The Likud Central Committee's decision has damaged Israel's international standing, but it has no significance, neither politically nor in any other way. When the day comes that the Palestinians return to the negotiating table, it's doubtful they will find a prime minister who won't try, like all his predecessors, to reach an agreement with them, including a state, with or without the approval of a few hundred raucous Central Committee members.
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