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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: E. T. who wrote (187682)	5/3/2004 3:57:05 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572942

I think you might be right. But they are trying to build their own nuclear bomb. A leading Iranian cleric was not alone in his thinking when he said the bomb would be useful in dealing with Israel... Iran is down wind from Israel. Do you think that it would be smart of them to nuke Israel? And remember Israel has well over 200 nuclear devises.

To: E. T. who wrote (187682)	5/3/2004 4:41:23 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1572942

Newsweek ‘Sharon is Weaker’ A political scientist assesses whether the Israeli prime minister can survive his party’s rejection of a plan to withdraw settlers from the Gaza Strip By Dan Ephron Newsweek Updated: 3:51 p.m. ET May 03, 2004May 3 - Ariel Sharon has known adversity. During nearly three decades in politics, the Israeli leader has had more than his share of defeats and comebacks. But the thrashing he suffered yesterday, when his rightist Likud Party soundly rejected his plan to withdraw Israeli soldiers and settlers from the Gaza Strip and four settlements in the West Bank is especially vexing for the prime minister’s plans. Sharon has now promised to rework the withdrawal plan, which has become a cornerstone of his administration in recent months. Yet with no mandate to carry it out, his political future is now mired in uncertainty. No less important, the prime minister has lost face with President George W. Bush, who embraced the unilateral initiative that has been rejected by Palestinian leaders. Sharon can blame aides for advising him to submit the program to a referendum and Palestinian militants for killing a pregnant mother and her four daughters on the day of the vote--an attack that helped kill the Israeli leader’s chances of victory in the non-binding vote. (Israel retaliated with air strikes that killed four Palestinian militants, including two local leaders of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, on Sunday night.) But Israeli political scientist Mark Heller also believes the withdrawal plan is not dead yet. Heller, a principal research associate at the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, spoke with NEWSWEEK’s Dan Ephron. Excerpts: NEWSWEEK: How does the defeat affect Ariel Sharon's political standing? Mark Heller: I think it leaves him weaker. He insists he will soldier on and all of the people in his party who opposed the initiative are at least going through motions, saying they weren't opposing him personally, only the plan. But I think he'll have to look for some alternative course of action if he wants to stay in power or promote some kind of agenda. What kind of alternative course? I think one possibility is to reshuffle his cabinet and raise the withdrawal plan again. Another is to call early elections. My sense is that right now he's floundering. I don't think he had a fallback plan worked out. Can Sharon keep pushing this plan without appearing to be defying the will of his party? There are endless ways by which Sharon could argue that the referendum isn't a true reflection of public sentiment. He could argue that not all the people meant to vote against it, or that the [50 percent] turnout was too low to scuttle such a significant program, or that he's everyone's prime minister and not just the Likud's. [Only party members were allowed to vote in the referendum.] Is there a scenario where Sharon disappears from the political stage as a result of this defeat. It's possible that a guy in his circumstances and at his age might throw his hands up in despair and say he's had it. But I don't think it will happen immediately. To get a kind of critical mass in favor of this idea, it's not enough to have the left or even the center in power. You have to have some part of the center right--and only Sharon can bring them around. Why did Sharon lose the referendum? I think it was a combination of better organizing on the part of the opponents to the plan and his inability to make a persuasive case why the idea was good for the country. Sharon knows the settlers well. How could he have underestimated their zeal and organizational skills in opposing the plan? I'm not sure he was wholly confident he could pass the plan unless he agreed to a referendum. I think he felt if he as unable to mobilize party support, it wouldn't pass anyway. How do you explain the strength of the settlement movement? Settlers amount to only about three percent of the Israeli public, but no Israeli leader has managed to roll back the movement for nearly 40 years. Part of it is explained by the peculiarities of Israeli political system that gives much influence to small groups which hold the balance of power. But my sense is that the biggest issue of all has been the inability of any Israeli political figure to make a convincing argument to the Israeli public about what we get in return for dismantling settlements. If it's in the context of a peace deal, that's one thing. But it's very difficult to refute the argument that [unilateral withdrawal] means surrendering to terrorism and could promote more terrorism. Has any Israeli leader been in this kind of situation? No, I can' think of anything quite this dramatic. Maybe because there wasn't anything quite as coherent as a party referendum. Menachem Begin [Israel's Prime Minister from 1977 to 1983] faced a lot of resistance from his own party to the idea of a peace agreement with Egypt. It's not at all clear that he would have been able to bring it off without the support of the opposition. Some people believe Sharon never really wanted this initiative to pass. What's your view? I'm very, very skeptical about any conspiracy theories in this part of the world. They're mostly a product of a fevered imagination. I'm not denying the possibility that Sharon accelerated his support for this idea after the Geneva initiative [of the Israeli left] came out, but if you watch what he's been saying for two years now, it's been contrary to his whole political history. I think he was very serious about the withdrawal, unlike some of his cabinet ministers. How big an anomaly is it that Sharon and the settlers are on different sides of the political fence now? I think it's an anomaly in the sense that it's a deviation from the tradition of the Likud Party. He's going against the grain of his own history, his party's history and his ideological past. But he's been evolving for a while and he's taken a lot of flack for it. How irked by this should President Bush be after giving Sharon assurances and expecting to see a withdrawal? I would be very surprised if there's any kind of animosity there. I think he's convinced Sharon has made an honest effort. Even elected leaders don't always get their way in democratic politics. msnbc.msn.com