Crisis Averted as Sharon Joins Israeli Cabinet

Ariel Sharon, the hefty former army general called “the Bulldozer” for his unrelenting pursuit of right-wing political goals, was sworn in as a member of the Israeli Cabinet on Monday to head a powerful new Infrastructure Ministry pieced together just for him.

The move came hours before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu left for his first state visit to Washington, ending weeks of bitter haggling among government coalition partners and meeting the deadline Foreign Minister David Levy had set for quitting the Cabinet if Sharon was not in it.

But while Netanyahu averted a government crisis at home, the appointment is not expected to be received warmly in Washington, where Sharon has long been viewed as an obstacle to Middle East peace. Palestinians and Israeli opposition leaders reinforced that view Monday, calling the new minister “trouble” for peace prospects.

“It is a bad signal. He will make trouble for us, for the Israeli government and for the peace process,” said Hanan Mikhail-Ashrawi, minister of higher education in the Palestinian Authority. “I think he will try to impose his racist ideas and will push the government more and more to the right.”

Sharon, 68, was the architect of Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon and of a Jewish settlement drive in the West Bank that brought the last Likud Party government into conflict with the Bush administration. He is considered such a stubborn free agent that many political analysts have been asking whether Likud leader Netanyahu is better off with Sharon in his government or out. Few came up with an answer.

Shortly before the May 29 Israeli elections, Sharon published a kind of manifesto for the Likud Party that contradicted several of Netanyahu’s campaign positions. While Netanyahu already had accepted the Israeli-Palestinian peace accords, Sharon called them “terrible and dangerous.”

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Netanyahu, however, owes his victory in large part to Sharon, who helped woo ultra-Orthodox Jewish voters to the Likud side and negotiated Levy’s return to the fold. Levy, a Moroccan Jew popular among less-affluent and Sephardic voters, had clashed with Netanyahu and left Likud to form his own Gesher Party. At Sharon’s behest, he then agreed not to run against Netanyahu for prime minister in exchange for the foreign minister’s post in a Netanyahu government.

Levy controls five of the 66 votes backing Netanyahu’s government in the 120-seat parliament, or Knesset. Netanyahu could continue to govern without Levy, but with a margin of only one vote--Sharon’s.

In announcing the appointment, Netanyahu said Sharon’s presence in the Cabinet “will help us greatly, not only in [infrastructure] but also in the fields of security and policy, considering his rich experience.”

Sharon previously has served as minister of defense, agriculture and housing. This time, he had sought the defense, finance or housing ministry. When Netanyahu did not give him one of those, he turned down other offers and withdrew to his ranch to let Levy do his bidding.

In this case, at least, the 46-year-old Netanyahu proved no match for the political veterans. Levy first threatened to withhold his support from the government June 18, just as Netanyahu was walking into the Knesset for a confidence vote and to be sworn in.

Netanyahu agreed to form the special ministry that day, and Levy took office alongside him. But the prime minister had trouble finding heft for the new government ministry when several Cabinet members refused to give up some of their turf to the Bulldozer, and Levy again threatened to resign if Sharon was not in office by today.

In the end, Sharon got control of oil refineries and pipelines, fuel imports and research, electricity, railroads, water and sewage. Sharon will also be responsible for development in the southern Negev and northern Galilee regions and for bypass roads around West Bank cities for Jewish settlers.

Smiling and thanking Levy, he said, “I believe we can do great things.”

That is apparently what scares the opposition.

The Labor Party’s Ephraim Sneh, a member of parliament and former health minister, predicted that Sharon will use the new ministry “to foil any attempt to advance toward a permanent settlement with the Palestinians. Land, roads and water are excellent means to hamper any agreement . . . Sharon is the bulldozer who will destroy the Oslo agreements [on Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiated in 1993]. Perhaps this isn’t the reason Mr. Netanyahu is bringing him into his government, but it is the reason Sharon is entering the government.”

Sharon’s broad mandate offers him ample opportunities to pursue his goal of consolidating Jewish control over the predominantly Palestinian West Bank. His view has long been that the West Bank is essential to Israel’s security and that the Palestinian population there should be dispersed as much as possible.

“Sharon is the person to watch in this government,” said Ehud Sprinzak, a political scientist at Hebrew University. “He is an enormous doer when he gets budgets and authority. He’s going to do a lot of things in Judea and Samaria--the occupied territories.”

Sharon’s determination, often with disregard for established procedures, bureaucracy and even the law, is what has made him so popular in the Likud Party and so difficult for Netanyahu to ignore.

As agriculture minister in the late 1970s, Sharon produced a map of the West Bank that looked like a pipe dream of settlements and roads. “Today, if you look at a map of the West Bank, there it is. You don’t have to ask what Sharon said then. He did it,” Sprinzak said.

To Palestinians, the burly, white-haired Sharon is a symbol of Israeli occupation and repression--an image he seems to relish. He owns a house in the Arab quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City that is draped with a huge Israeli flag.

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Sharon was forced to resign as defense minister a year after Israel invaded Lebanon when an Israeli inquiry found him indirectly responsible for a massacre by Christian militiamen of hundreds of Palestinians in two Beirut refugee camps that were surrounded by Israeli soldiers.

Also Monday, Eliahu Ben-Elissar was named as Israel’s next ambassador to the United States. Ben-Elissar, 64, who was Israel’s first ambassador to Egypt, will replace outgoing Ambassador Itamar Rabinovich on Sept. 1.