Q&A: Politics in Israel After Sharon
On Jan. 5, a notice board carried election posters both for and against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. His health problems blur the political outlook in Israel and the region.
On Jan. 5, a notice board carried election posters both for and against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. His health problems blur the political outlook in Israel and the region.
Ariel Sharon Timeline
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's sudden health problems raise serious questions about the future of politics in Israel and the Middle East. NPR Foreign Editor Loren Jenkins offers his insight on the core issues:
Q: What will Ariel Sharon's demise mean to Israeli politics?
Loren Jenkins: It means the passing of the epic era of Israel's founders. Ariel Sharon was the last of the citizen soldiers who fought for the creation of Israel in the 1940s and defended it militarily and dominated it politically ever since. The only other prominent politico from that era, is Shimon Peres, long a political enemy but personal friend and recent ally. Probably not since Ben Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, has one man so dominated Israeli politics as Sharon has in the past half a decade that he has ruled. His was the generation of Ben Gurion, Golda Meir, Menachen Begin, Yizhak Rabin. These were the founders of Israel and as such commanded a special respect even among those who didn't always agree with their policies. With the generational change that Sharon's demise represents, Israel will henceforth be governed by a younger generation made up mostly of professional politicians rather than national warrior founders. None will command the respect and support of a Sharon or Rabin and because of that making any progress towards settlement of the 58-year-old old Arab-Israeli dispute could well become more difficult.
Q: Only two months ago Sharon left the right-wing Likud party that he helped found three decades ago, and formed a new centrist party, Kadima, to contest the upcoming March elections. What happens to Kadima now?
A: That is the big question. Only weeks ago polls were predicting that Sharon's new Kadima party -- which drew politicians from both the right-wing Likud and the left-wing Labor -- would win a good third of the 120 Knesset seats in next March's election and be the dominant party in any future coalition government. But Kadima was Sharon. It has no ideology, no party platform, no real identity beyond it being the party of the prime minister. Kadima hasn't even determined the names of its electoral list. So what everyone is watching is whether this new party, which sought a total realignment of Israeli politics, can hold together without Sharon at its helm. If it can't, it will be politics as usual in Israel: a return to a fragmented body politic in which the weakened Likud and Labor parties can only form governments by allying themselves with a disparate array of splinter parties that make innovative policies all but impossible.
Q: Who succeeds Sharon as head of Kadima?
A: Sharon's deputy prime minister, Ehud Olmert, has already been appointed acting prime minister for the next 100 days and he is most likely to be chosen leader of Kadima when the party holds its primary. A former hard-line mayor of Jerusalem, Olmert is a very talented and experienced politician. But he lacks Sharon's charisma, Sharon's military credentials and, because of a reputation for bluntness and argumentation, he does not have a great personal following. But his strength is that he was Sharon's alter-ego and can be expected to continue Sharon's policy of seeking separation from the Palestinians rather than negotiations for peace with them. Those who might challenge Olmert's bid for party leadership are popular Justice Minister Tzipi Livni or current Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, whose strength is his military and security background.
Q: Who are the other candidates to succeed Sharon as prime minister?
A: The real battle for next premiership of Israel will be decided by the March 28th elections that are to be held as scheduled. The elections will establish how strong Kadima is without Sharon. If the party can hold together and unite behind Olmert, he will be the leading candidate to head the next government. But he will be challenged on the right by former Prime Minister and Likkud party leader Benyamin Netanyahu and on the left by the Labor Party's new leader, Amir Peretz. Netanyahu is a former prime minister who quit as Sharon's finance minister last summer because he opposed Sharon's decision to end Israel's occupation of Gaza. He is popular only on the extreme right and among the disgruntled Israeli settler movement. Peretz, a tough labor union leader, is new to the national political scene and therefore still somewhat of an unknown quantity with the electorate at large.
Q: What does all this mean for the immediate future of the region?
A: For starters it means Sharon's singular vision of settling the Israeli-Palestinian dispute on his terms, is now in doubt. Sharon's plan was to replace the failed efforts to negotiate a peace settlement with the Palestinians with a program of unilateral separation from them on Israeli terms. These policies stem from Sharon's realization that continued occupation of the Palestinian territories captured in the 1967 war, was a demographic time bomb that threatened Israel's status as both a democratic and Jewish state. The Israeli pullout from Gaza last summer was the first step in separating Israel from the main Palestinian population concentrations. The ongoing construction of a steel and concrete barrier in the West Bank is step two. Eventually, it was believed Sharon envisaged unilaterally redrawing the boundaries separating Israel from the West Bank, incorporating the major Israeli settlement blocs, while dismantling the smaller, more isolated ones to allow Palestinians to create whatever state they can on the remaining West Bank territories and Gaza. Whether the government that succeeds Sharon can or will want to continue such policies will depend in large part on the March election and who emerges as Israel's next leader.
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