Sharon’s Opponents Jockey for Position

After a bloody crescendo of suicide bombings, “Operation Defensive Shield,” the Saudi initiative and the American plan to convene a Middle East peace conference this summer or fall, things are beginning to move around here.

In the past few weeks, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon managed to convert two ringing defeats into victories. When his own Likud Party tried to bind him to a total rejection of the Palestinian state option, he declared that, as a national leader, he was above party politics and assured U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell that he still favored a Palestinian state at the end of the process. When his emergency economic austerity plan suffered a surprise defeat in the Israeli Knesset last week, Sharon kicked the culprits--ultra-Orthodox ministers from the Shas and United Torah parties--out of his coalition government, declaring that he wouldn’t budge until the economic package was passed. Both moves earned him genuine kudos from a large majority of the Israeli public.

Yet the public continues to send mixed messages to the pollsters. While 70% support the firing of the ultra-Orthodox ministers, only 37% support the emergency economic package, while 49% are opposed. An overwhelming 90% are worried about Israel’s economic situation.

The public is also sending mixed messages about peace and security. While 70% support military action in response to the suicide bombers, more than 60% also back a return to the diplomatic process, the eventual establishment of a Palestinian state and the removal of settlements in exchange for peace.

Sharon came to power in February 2001 after the failure of the Camp David talks and the outbreak of the second intifada. He promised both personal security and peace, but so far has failed to deliver on either. He has presided over a sharply declining economy. Still, Sharon pulled 50% support in the latest polls, but potential challengers are jockeying for position on both the right and the left.

His only serious challenger on the right, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is considered the king of the Likud Central Committee, the body that nominates the party’s candidates for national leadership. Since his loss to Ehud Barak in June 1999, Netanyahu has roamed the world making public speeches (at $50,000 a pop) and has studiously cultivated the image of a “new Netanyahu,” who is less argumentative and more cooperative and inclusive in his approach. Of course, it may be hard to convince anyone he’s really changed given his recent performance. With one rash political move--challenging a popular sitting prime minister from his own party--all of Netanyahu’s old negative skeletons came tumbling out of the closet. The new Netanyahu gave way to “the old Bibi,” and his rivals and the media had a field day.

Still, Netanyahu is a master communicator. His strategy is to outflank Sharon from the right, declaring not simply that there will never be a Palestinian state but going beyond that to call for the destruction of the Palestinian Authority and the expulsion of Yasser Arafat.

Two candidates are competing for the opportunity to challenge Sharon from the left--Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, who also doubles as chairman of the Labor Party, and Labor Knesset member Haim Ramon.

Ben-Eliezer’s advantages are that he has a military background and is well entrenched in the party. An Iraqi Jew from a working-class background, he can play the “man-of-the-people” card. No one ever called him articulate, however, and no amount of prompting and preparation will make him telegenic.

Ramon, a former minister of health who got his start in student politics, is a self-made man from a working-class family south of Tel Aviv. An effective populist speaker, Ramon proved his ability to win elections when he broke with his party in 1994 and ran as a reformer for secretary-general of Histadrut, Israel’s huge trade union federation. On the down side, he has no military background at a time when national security is on every voter’s mind. Moreover, his party has never quite forgiven him for winning the Histadrut election--and, some say, destroying the Labor Federation in the process.

All the candidates realize the uphill battle they must wage to defeat a popular incumbent, and so they look for every weakness. While Sharon has refused to publicly commit himself to any political program beyond the “readiness to make painful compromises when the time comes,” both Ben-Eliezer and Ramon are trying to sharpen their images with specifics.

Ben-Eliezer wants to renew negotiations from the point that was reached at Camp David, pushing for an eventual agreement that would include Clinton’s December 2000 plan for a Palestinian state encompassing all of Gaza and 95% of the West Bank, including the Arab sections of East Jerusalem. Ramon is riding a popular wave of support for a unilateral withdrawal to defensible borders (he calls it unilateral separation) and the establishment of physical barriers between Israel proper and a future Palestinian state. Both say that Arafat has proved that he cannot be a partner for future negotiations, yet if either is elected it can be assumed that negotiations will resume immediately with the leadership of the Palestinian Authority.

Netanyahu hopes that the voters will have forgotten the sorry ending of his previous term in office and that his self-promulgated reputation as a tough-talking anti-terrorism expert will stand him in good stead at a time when Israelis are extremely anxious about suicide bombers. Two key dates are coming up that could shape the coming elections--the peace conference, which Powell has declared will be convened soon, and the Labor Party convention this July, which will draft a new platform. Ben-Eliezer has declared that the Labor Party will leave the National Unity government soon afterward in order to establish a clear-cut alternative to the Likud.

The bottom line of Israeli politics today: It’s personal security and economics, stupid. If the elections were held tomorrow, Sharon would win. But if the suicide bombings continue and the economy deteriorates further, he will become vulnerable to either Netanyahu on his right or to a left-wing candidate who can clearly articulate an alternative and convincing political vision.