Settlers Turn Against Their Champion

Ariel Sharon was the man who nurtured the Jewish settlement movement from its infancy, drawing lines in the sand of the Gaza Strip where not only Israeli soldiers would be deployed, but Israeli civilians alongside them would sink roots, build homes, raise crops and families.

On Sunday, that lifetime’s labor turned against Sharon, dealing him one of the most decisive defeats of his political career. The settlers and their allies were the galvanizing force behind a vote Sunday by the prime minister’s Likud Party to overwhelmingly reject his plan to uproot the settlements of Gaza.

Now what remains to be seen is whether the old ex-general can recover from a rout of proportions he rarely experienced on the battlefield -- a setback that undercuts the latest U.S.-endorsed efforts to break the Israeli-Palestinian deadlock and throws the Israeli domestic political scene into disarray.

Analysts said a narrow defeat would probably have allowed Sharon to brush off the referendum result -- which he had first pledged to abide by but then said he considered nonbinding -- and push ahead with his plan on other fronts.

But so powerful a rebuff from his own party calls into question the 76-year-old prime minister’s ability to hang on to the Likud leadership, particularly with popular potential challengers such as Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu -- who gave the plan only grudging support -- waiting in the wings.

The party vote, which Sharon had hoped would give him momentum as he prepared to seek the approval of his Cabinet and the parliament, or Knesset, does not necessarily preclude him from taking those steps as planned. But it makes movement forward much more difficult.

Right-wing ministers in Sharon’s Cabinet, who had delayed a confrontation with the prime minister despite their furious opposition to the plan, are likely now to be emboldened by his inability to muster his Likud troops to his side.

Likud ministers who are Sharon’s ostensible allies -- such as Netanyahu and Education Minister Limor Livnat -- may reverse their previously stated support for the plan, citing the will of the party, and thus imperil a Cabinet majority.

And the left-leaning Labor Party, which has signaled willingness to form a coalition with Sharon if hard-liners bolt his government, is unwilling to cement any alliance unless the attorney general rules out bringing charges against the prime minister in a corruption scandal.

Although the double-digit loss was seen as a body blow for Sharon, some also suggested that Likud, by rejecting an initiative that has wide backing among the general Israeli public, was pushing itself toward the margins of political life.

“The Likud is not the state of Israel, and the state of Israel is not the Likud,” said Justice Minister Tommy Lapid of Shinui, a centrist party. “They have separated themselves from the public.” Observers of Sharon’s life and career blamed hubris for causing him to take on a challenge he could so easily have bypassed.

“That’s what I don’t understand -- why would he do this, why would he take this risk?” said Hebrew University professor Tamar Liebes. “Because he was overconfident.” Ironically, many of the settlers and their supporters say it was never their intention to irreparably damage the prime minister’s prestige or standing. What they wanted to do, they said, was help him return to the pro-settlement fold -- to revert to the hawkish Sharon they knew and supported.

Even as the polling places were opening Sunday morning for the vote, some observers thought the prime minister might yet eke out a victory -- or at least a close loss.

But as so often happens in the region, events on the ground can dramatically alter the political dynamic. A few hours into the voting, a young mother and her four daughters were gunned down by Palestinian assailants as they drove from their home in the Gaza settlement block of Gush Katif toward Israel proper -- to lobby, neighbors told Israel Radio, against Sharon’s plan.

Thousands thronged the twilight funeral for Tali Hatuel, who was 34 years old and eight months pregnant, and her girls, 11-year-old Hilla, 9-year-old Hadar, 7-year-old Roni and 2-year-old Meirav. “My flowers,” their father, David Hatuel, sobbed at the graves.

Viewers all over Israel shuddered at TV footage of the shattered family car, which showed an infant seat riddled with bullets, a bloodied children’s book with teddy bears on its cover, and seats covered with blood and shards of glass.

To some, the violent fate of the Hatuel family was proof that Gaza, where 7,500 Jews live in fortified settlements among 1.2 million Palestinians, is a dangerous quagmire that Israel would do well to leave behind.

To many others, though, the ambush -- the first fatal attack against Jewish settlers in Gaza in more than a year -- underscored the need to retain an Israeli line of defense in the seaside strip of territory.

In the months since Sharon began speaking of relinquishing Gaza, one of the key points of contention has been whether an Israeli pullout would represent victory for armed groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which have carried out hundreds of attacks against Israelis in more than 3 1/2 years of conflict.

The Israeli leader has been doing all he can to counter any notion that a pullout would amount to capitulation. The two top Gaza-based leaders of Hamas -- Sheik Ahmed Yassin and his successor, Abdulaziz Rantisi -- met fiery deaths in Israeli helicopter missile strikes less than a month apart. Militant fugitives were relentlessly hunted down in raids and incursions in both Gaza and the West Bank.

Within hours of the ambush that killed Tali Hatuel and her children, an Israeli helicopter fired missiles into a Gaza City building housing a Hamas-affiliated radio station and offices of two Palestinian newspapers. Few in Gaza, however, expected that would be the only Israeli retaliation for the attack.

Prior to the vote, Sharon had spent more than a year preparing the Likud faithful for the prospect of breaking with what had been the party’s bedrock doctrine, and his own: Build more and more settlements, and never give up any of them.

Little by little, Sharon made it clear that he now believed that it was impossible for Israel to continue to exert control over all the West Bank and Gaza. Last year, he shocked his followers when he asserted for the first time that the occupation of territories that are home to more than 3 million Palestinians was bad for Israel.

Sharon disclosed full details of his Gaza initiative only weeks ago, as he prepared to travel to Washington and win endorsement of the plan from President Bush. Israel, the prime minister said, intended to leave Gaza by the middle of next year but would seek to retain large settlement blocks in the West Bank.

If Sharon had hoped that holding out the promise of, in effect, exchanging Gaza for much more densely populated settlements in the West Bank would split the settler movement, he miscalculated.

Settlers from both Gaza and the West Bank -- including many living in blocks Sharon had promised would remain in Israeli hands -- mounted an effective and well-organized grass-roots campaign against his initiative.

In the settler camp, though, there was recognition that the ultimate fate of Sharon’s pullout plan is very much an unanswered question.

“The victory is not a happy one,” said Avner Shimoni, a Gaza settler spokesman. “Today’s vote is not the end, I’m afraid, but rather the beginning.”