Sharon, the Dream Killer

The bustle on Sheinkin Street is typical. Young customers who fancy new clothes and electronic gadgets browse in its fashionable shops and boutiques. Others sit around tables in cafes and restaurants enjoying the winter sun. Not far away at the cultural center is a new exhibition of the French impressionist painter, Pierre Bonnard. Only the posters in black frames indicate a different reality from that in U.S. or European cities. They announce the deaths of Mordechai Dayan and Etgar Zeituni, two young restaurateurs who owned a popular coffee shop on Sheinkin Street. In broad daylight, the two men were snatched by Palestinian gunmen from a restaurant in the town of Tulkarm on the West Bank and executed. Dayan and Zeituni had been looking for cheap plants and pots to decorate their restaurant. They had ignored a strict government order forbidding Israeli citizens to visit Palestinian areas.

Sheinkin Street and its neighborhood, nicknamed “Tel Aviv’s Greenwich Village,” symbolize the desire of Israelis, especially the younger generation, to lead a normal life. Tel Aviv is where Israel’s culture flourishes. It represents one face of Israel: secular, pluralist, open, vital and tolerant. Israel’s other face is Jerusalem, the capital, where political tensions, violence and ideological divisions hold sway.

The “normalcy” and tranquillity of Tel Aviv seem odd to many Israelis who live here, and not simply because Israel is generally a noisy and hectic place. Rather, it is because in two days huge changes are expected. On Tuesday, 3.5 million eligible Israeli voters will elect a new prime minister. According to polls, Ariel Sharon, leader of the right-wing Likud bloc, is comfortably ahead--50% to 34%--of caretaker Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Only a miracle can bridge this gap and stop Sharon, 73, from becoming the 12th prime minister of the Jewish state. Yet, Israelis, especially the “Tel Avivian” half of them, seem complacent, unmoved and uninterested. Many are in denial.

Realists expect a bleak future--domestically, regionally and internationally--if Sharon is elected. Most Israeli defense and political experts, as well as international commentators on the Middle East, predict that the Palestinian uprising will intensify. The new intifada broke out last October following the failure of Israeli and Palestinian negotiators to reach an agreement on peace. Since then, clashes between the armed forces of the two sides, together with Palestinian terrorist attacks and Israeli reprisals, have claimed more than 300 Palestinian and nearly 60 Israeli lives. Thousands have been wounded.

The inability of the two sides to make peace has especially hurt liberal and moderate Israelis, including those identified with “Sheinkin culture and mentality,” as the Israeli right dubs them. Since Barak’s overwhelming election victory over former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in May 1999, these Israelis had high expectations that Barak would achieve an ultimate peace with both Syria and the Palestinians. They had also hoped that he would fashion a new national agenda based on the idea of a “civic” society free of religious coercion.

Barak certainly tried hard to please these Israelis. Although he abandoned his civic goals to appease the religious parties, Barak did it in the name of peace. Supported by former President Bill Clinton, Barak was willing to make unprecedented territorial, military and diplomatic concessions to the Palestinians. Among them were the return of nearly 99% of the Golan Heights to the Syrians, 96% of the West Bank and Gaza to the Palestinians, and a readiness to share sovereignty over Jerusalem with the Palestinians.

Barak’s concessions angered the religious parties, and they double-crossed him. Other coalition partners deserted his Cabinet as well, leaving him with a minority government unable to rule and administer. Israel sank into political crisis.

In such circumstances, Barak could not rest on his two laurels: the economic boom generated by the growth of Israeli high technology and the Israeli Army’s withdrawal from Lebanon. Disillusionment with Barak’s performance, the loss of faith in the sincerity of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s desire for peace and the mounting death toll on both sides have led many Israeli voters to turn their backs on the prime minister. Many others say they will boycott the election. It is estimated that turnout for Tuesday’s elections will be the lowest in Israeli history.

Low turnout will help Sharon. If elected, he promises to form a national unity cabinet, with Barak as his defense minister. But it is more likely that Sharon will establish a right-wing government whose constituency will consist of Jewish settlers, the orthodox and conservatives.

Sharon, who titled his autobiography “Warrior,” has tried during the campaign to soften his image as a hard-liner, warmonger and prisoner of the extreme right. Unconvinced Israelis fear a worst-case scenario if he wins: intensification of the intifada will lead to an increase in retaliation by the Israeli military, which, in turn, will create an outcry in the Arab world and generate a climate of escalation leading to a regional war. A war, whether of attrition or a full-scale one, will isolate Israel and turn Sharon into an international outcast, in effect making him an Israeli Slobodan Milosevic. Of course, Sharon’s record is different from that of the former Yugoslav president. He has never ordered or initiated genocide or ethnic cleansing or led a regime of repression. But he is a controversial figure and his image is tarnished, maybe irreversibly so, in many parts of the world.

Should such a scenario come to pass, the hopes, dreams and illusions of at least one half of Israel will perish. Israel under Sharon may well become more divided and polarized than ever. Life on Sheinkin Street may be increasingly distracted by posters framed in black.