While Talking Peace, Sharon Defiant Over Jerusalem’s Fate

Moving quickly to reinvent himself to the world as a statesman capable of pursuing peace, Israeli Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon said Wednesday that he is dispatching a team of senior advisors to Washington to explain his foreign policy to the Bush administration, congressional leaders and the U.S. Jewish community.

But even as Sharon welcomed what an aide called a “warm” message of congratulations from Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, the hawkish former general also paid a visit to Jerusalem’s Western Wall, where he promised that the city will remain the capital of the Jewish people “for all eternity.”

Sharon’s visit to the sacred spot sent a strong message that he will be unwilling to entertain the sort of compromises that Ehud Barak, the man he defeated in a landslide Tuesday, offered the Palestinians. Barak had proposed sharing sovereignty over Jerusalem, which both Israel and the Palestinians claim as their capital.

Critics say Sharon’s Sept. 28 visit to the Temple Mount, a site holy to Muslims and Jews that abuts the Western Wall, triggered the violence that derailed Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts. Muslims looked at the visit as a heavy-handed assertion of Israeli sovereignty over the site.

Sharon’s day began with a sentimental visit to the grave of his wife, Lili, who died of cancer in March. He then plunged into the daunting task of forming a coalition government and reassuring Israelis and the international community that his crushing defeat of Barak will not spell the end of the peace process or drive the region to war.

“He wants to reassure everyone that he didn’t win this election by a landslide to make war, he won it by a landslide to make peace,” said Ranaan Gissin, a Sharon spokesman.

Sharon named a team to negotiate with potential coalition partners and renewed his call for Barak’s center-left Labor Party to join him in building a broad-based government. He was said to be willing to offer the job of foreign minister to Shimon Peres, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who is the Israeli statesman most closely identified with Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking efforts.

“The prime minister-elect will invite to a national unity government every Zionist party that is willing to participate in a government that will be serious, responsible and strive for peace,” Eyal Arad, Sharon’s strategic advisor, said at a Jerusalem news conference. Under Israeli law, Sharon has 45 days after the election results are published Feb. 14 to form a new government.

Sharon asked former Defense Minister Moshe Arens, former ambassador to the U.S. Zalman Shoval and former U.N. Ambassador Dore Gold to travel to Washington on his behalf, Arad said. “They will reiterate the new government’s commitment to a peace where the first condition should be full security to the citizens of Israel,” he said, and will “study together the best way to achieve real peace” and strengthen U.S.-Israeli relations.

Arad refused to say whether Sharon will condition the start of talks with the Palestinians on a cessation of violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which has left nearly 400 people dead in the last four months. Israeli troops and Palestinians shot at each other in the West Bank city of Hebron on Wednesday, but no injuries were reported.

Arad told reporters that Sharon received what he called “a very warm written message” from Arafat on Wednesday.

“Our hands will continue to be held out to make peace, because both parties expect it,” Arad quoted Arafat as writing. “I hope that this year will be the year of building peace, peace of the brave in the best interests of the people of the region.” Arad said that Sharon will reply soon to the message.

Arad’s highlighting of the message seemed intended to underscore that Sharon is prepared to build a relationship with the Palestinian leader whom he recently called a “murderer” in an interview. The two have met in the past, but Sharon has always refused to shake hands with Arafat, saying that he has Jewish blood on his hands.

But it will take more than envoys to Washington and the exchange of messages with Arafat for Sharon to get peace talks on track with the Palestinians. Arab states and senior Palestinian officials already are sounding the alarm that it could well be impossible for them to find enough common ground with Sharon to advance the prospects for peace.

He has indicated that he would agree to the eventual establishment of a Palestinian state but only in about 42% of the West Bank and two-thirds of Gaza. The Palestinians insist on Israel returning nearly all the lands it captured in the 1967 Middle East War, including East Jerusalem.

“I am visiting Jerusalem, the capital of the Jewish people for the past 3,000 years and the united and indivisible capital of Israel--with the Temple Mount at its center--for all eternity,” Sharon said as he stood with his hand on the ancient stone wall Wednesday.

Even as he talked tough, however, Sharon worked to form a coalition from the badly divided parliament that will leave him some diplomatic maneuvering room. Barak’s resignation as head of the Labor Party after his humiliating defeat Tuesday made it more likely that Labor will opt out of joining with Sharon, analysts said Wednesday.

Without Labor as a partner, Sharon will be forced to build a narrow, inherently unstable government that will include many far-right and ultra-Orthodox parties. In a narrow government, each small party would have the power to extract concessions from Sharon.

Labor “should not slam the door” on Sharon’s offer to join him in building a coalition, said Barak’s deputy defense minister, Ephraim Sneh. But he said he doubts that Labor could accept Sharon’s approach to peacemaking as a basis for forming a government.

“Our attitudes, our concepts are contradictory,” Sneh said. “Sharon cannot reconcile his call to Labor with the demands of the hard-liners who brought him to power.” Even if Labor were willing to forget the concessions that Barak’s government offered to the Palestinians last summer during the failed Camp David summit and last month during talks in Egypt, Sneh said, it cannot abandon the Oslo peace process launched in 1993 by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was killed in 1995. Sharon has declared the Oslo accords between Israel and the Palestinians dead.

Labor on Wednesday was consumed by the power struggle unleashed by Barak when he announced after the polls closed a day earlier that he was quitting as head of the party. One of his allies, lawmaker Elie Goldschmidt, announced Wednesday that he was so disgusted by his Labor colleagues’ abandonment of Barak during the campaign that he is resigning from parliament and quitting politics. Labor is led, Goldschmidt said, by a “den of knifers” who had betrayed Barak.