Ha'aretz: Sharon likely to leave Likud Party

Early elections likely to be held by mid-February
By Mazal Mualem, Yossi Verter and Aluf Benn, Haaretz Correspondents
21/11/2005

<http://news.haaretz.co.il/hasen/spages/647757.html>

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is expected to announce Monday that he will quit the Likud and establish a new party, senior Likud officials said Sunday night.

Sharon will then ask President Moshe Katsav to dissolve the Knesset. According to the law, elections would be held within 90 days - by the middle of February 2006, an entire month before the date Labor and Likud representatives set on Sunday. <snip>

A Sharon associate said the prime minister appeared tense the night before he made his decision, because "this is a dramatic and fateful decision fraught with danger. Sharon has already been prime minister. He wants to lead processes, and he understands that they won't let him in the Likud, but he is torn because this is a sensitive decision from his perspective - he established the Likud."

Sharon spent Sunday speaking with his close advisers and held several political meetings. He met with Vice Premier Shimon Peres, who is resigning from the government today, along with the other Labor ministers, in compliance with Sunday's Labor Central Committee decision. Sharon also met with Finance Minister Ehud Olmert, who said yesterday at a conference at Ben-Gurion University that if Sharon leaves the Likud, he will join him in forming a new party.

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The decisive factor in Sharon's decision was almost certainly Amir Peretz's surprising victory in the Labor Party elections recently. For Sharon, this meant that elections were going to be moved up, as Peretz would have Labor quit the government, so he had to decide about his future party membership sooner rather than later. But more, it meant that in those upcoming elections, he would not be facing the bland opposition of Shimon Peres, who would certainly not be likely to sway any significant number of voters who had already elected Sharon twice.

Sharon then found himself facing a true opposition party as the head of a party that was increasingly divided. Although some of the rancor within Likud over the Gaza withdrawal has abated, the rift within the party remains. Sharon may well still have been confident that he could win an election as Likud head, but he has likely also realized that even if he wins, dissension within his own party will make moving forward with his agenda more difficult.

Sharon has not actually announced his decision, and it would not be out of character for him to float such a rumor and then back away. But presuming he really is going to bolt Likud, it is telling that he spent today meeting with, among others, Shimon Peres. His ambition is to form a third party that would occupy the center between Likud and Labor. Indeed, it would be "centrist" in that formulation, with a Likud that would slide farther to the right and a Labor Party that, while not being a truly "leftist" party, has, with Peretz's election, moved farther to the left than it was. Still, it is important to realize that a new Sharon-led party will be centrist only in the context of a group of parties that, collectively, shade rightward, with the left-most of them still being, at least in terms of dealing with the Palestinian and other international issues, pretty distant from a truly left-wing position. Peretz confirmed this in his speech Sunday to the Labor Central Committee where he declared absolute opposition to any Palestinian return behind the Green Line and equally firm support for a united Jerusalem fully under Israel's control.

Sharon's departure from Likud will likely lead to one of three men winning control of the party. Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would likely be the front-runner. Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz would have the support of the "moderate" wing of Likud, but his support would be weakened by the fact that his appeal would largely be among those who are more likely to leave the party with Sharon. Finally, MK Uzi Landau, who was the leader of the hardliners who so bitterly opposed Sharon over the Gaza withdrawal would be the far-right option to Netanyahu, an appellation that well illustrates how far to the right Likud will go if Sharon leaves. That Sharon -- the former Labor Party member who became the architect of Likud, who is nicknamed "the Bulldozer" and who was the political father of the settlements -- leaving a party can make it drift significantly farther to the right says a great deal about the state of the Israel political environment these days.

Sharon's departure will significantly weaken Likud. The big question will be what effect it will have on Labor. It would be surprising if Shimon Peres did not join Sharon's new party, assuming he is not interested in retirement. Peres has little future in Labor, and a Sharon "centrist" party would seem the most natural fit for him. But how much support he and Sharon can draw from Labor is unclear. A Labor Party that holds the third-most seats in the Knesset will not be an important opposition party. On the other hand, if Amir Peretz can draw some of the support of Mizrahi and working-class voters from Likud and restore some Arab support for Labor, they could challenge the new Sharon party.

Finally, but most importantly, it will be important to keep an eye on how the election campaign's tone sounds, whether Sharon leaves Likud or not. While Amir Peretz's views on the conflict with the Palestinians are notably different from Sharon's, he will be making every effort to keep the campaign focus on domestic issues. Peretz will not want to draw attention to his limited military experience and his lack of experience in international affairs. If Sharon perceives that Peretz is his main challenger, he may well wish to provoke confrontations with the Palestinians, to raise the question in Israelis' minds of whether they want the inexperienced Peretz to be dealing with the Palestinians. If Sharon perceives his biggest challenge to be coming from the Likud, he will more likely wish to enhance the perception that his "concessions" have been effective. Attacks by Palestinians could even be written off to Israel having been pressured by the United States to agree to allow Palestinian control of the Rafah crossing out of Gaza and for traffic between Gaza and the West Bank this past week.

The wild card in this will be the Palestinian militant groups. The commitment of Hamas and other groups to a cease-fire with Israel expires at the end of the year, some six weeks before the elections will be held. In 1996, wishing to stop the Oslo process, a string of suicide bombings was unleashed so that the more blatantly aggressive Netanyahu would be elected. It seems unlikely that they would really want Sharon to win out over Peretz. In 1996, Shimon Peres was being seen as the peace-maker, despite the massive proliferation of settlements that was occurring despite the Oslo Agreement (which, it should be noted, did not specifically forbid it). That was why some Palestinians preferred the more obviously anti-peace Netanyahu. Now, it is Sharon who is being seen as a "peacemaker", despite the cognitive dissonance that idea provokes. There is therefore no reason to prefer Sharon to Peretz. And the latter years of Oslo amply demonstrated that the Palestinians gain little by having a radical militarist like Netanyahu or, worse, Landau, in power. Hopefully, therefore, the Palestinian armed groups will refrain from action, even if Sharon tries to bait them into it. This would also be a good time for Mahmoud Abbas to try to spread support for bilateral, rather than unilateral, action in Israel. Unfortunately, it is a virtual certainty that American help for Abbas, pitiful though it is most of the time, will be even less present until after the election. The US always backs away from israel during election time, not wanting to be seen as interfering in elections. -- MP]

-- Main thing is, the monster of the Israeli grand coalition is down. This can be of importance for the US as well, dems can be less GOP-compliant.
-- israeli Labs are very likely to lose the next elections, they are weak.
-- Arik-Likudoid is not likely to last long.