So who's in charge here?
Sharon may emerge as the unrivalled king of Israeli politics by the end of the month
At the end of this month, Ariel Sharon may well be crowned the unrivalled king of Israeli politics, a magician who can laugh in Benjamin Netanyahu’s face, and the best tightrope walker in town, a man who can emerge from any situation unscathed.
If the polls published in the media in recent days are to be believed, it seems that Sharon will succeed in his ambition to push back a vote on bringing forward the Likud primaries at the party’s next Central Committee meeting. By doing so, Sharon will have succeeded in putting off attempts to overthrow him from the party’s helm, scoring an unlimited number of political points.
Assuming Sharon pulls this all off, and manages to hold the fort against the far right within the Likud, a completely new game, with new rules, will begin. A few extra months is an eternity in Israeli politics, during which everything and anything can happen.
The prime minister seems to have regained the reigns of power, with coolness, hard work, and without pressure. He has overcome the wild hatred against him developed by Likud Committee members since he initiated the disengagement plan.
It’s not that Sharon is suddenly loved by those same Committee members, but the prime minister knows exactly which buttons to push to cool everyone down, and to take control of the wild horses who decided to gallop straight into a wall and to send him, and the mandates he gave the Likud, back to the ranch.
Sharon understands the minds of the Committee members. He knows their personalities, their lust for power, the factor that trumps all in their decision making process.
His decision not to blink in the face of threats against him worked its magic, and the people, especially the Committee people, like to see the prime minister return uncompromising fire at his political rivals.
And Sharon has returned wonderful fire in the past two weeks.
All’s fair in love and war. Sharon’s political foes, who planned his overthrow for months, are already beginning to accuse the prime minister, his son Omri, and his close aides of using illegal political means to wage the campaign.
The prime minister is threatening people with unemployment, say his rivals. He is using his power in the government in order to increase budgets for all those who promise to save his skin.
Excuses
Even Netanyahu began looking for excuses for the failure to topple the prime minister. The former finance minister is no longer so sure that he will smile with victory for the cameras by the end of the month.
His uncertainty stems from reading the polls, and seeing the trends, from understanding that he won’t make it. Netanyahu understands that he and his friends from the right can only climb down from the tree they are on.
As far as Netanyahu is concerned, Sharon is only buying time. The former finance minister is convinced that he is about to beat Sharon in the upcoming elections, even if they don’t take place in November. Netanyahu also thinks that he will put together the next government. Therefore, Sharon is stalling, as he plans his resignation, and the building of a new party, according to Netanyahu.
But Netanyahu also knows that he has no chance to topple Sharon from power at this point.
Sharon can be prime minister for as long as he wants, because there simply aren’t 61 knesset members who will vote for a government headed by Netanyahu.
That’s why Netanyahu and his supporters announced this week that they are no longer seeking to torpedo the government. The tactic of all or nothing has failed, and the Bibi camp took a step back.
Lieberman getting moderate?
When one thinks of Avigdor Lieberman, one usually thinks of a mountain of a man, bearded, a tough right winger with a Russian accent who eats Arabs for breakfast. But Lieberman is changing, or at least is trying to show he is.
He lost 18 kilograms in recent months, and he seems to have shed his fierceness with his weight. He is calmer, and ‘more moderate,’ as his spokesman, Avi Peled, described him.
But its doubtful whether Lieberman has really changed. He still advances a policy of territory exchanges, and moving Israeli-Arabs to the Palestinian Authority. In the language of the people, this is called transfer, but Lieberman believes that everyone will think like him in the end.
In any case, the public line he has towed has changed of late. His party, Yisrael Beiteinu, is more fixed on economic issues, and is trying to initiate change for the right wing bourgeoisie.
“I don’t think I’ve gone soft,” he told Ynet at his party headquarters in Jerusalem this week. “We have too many stigmas. People now understand that the things I’ve been saying are true. But if we don’t change the economics of this country, if we don’t become a modern and advanced country, no one will want to live here. Already, there is negative emigration. That’s why there has to be an institutional economic change, and investments for the long term. If the quality of life starts getting higher than the quality of life in Switzerland, Jews will want to live here. If not, they won’t,” he said.
Worthy of note…
Ehud Barak. Last week, in a clever political maneuver, Barak announced his support for Shimon Peres as Labor party leader. But this week, something seems to have gone wrong. Peres hasn’t agreed to play the game, and he’s called for primaries at the start of November, which will include all party functionaries, rather than the party Committee as Barak requested. Matan Vilnai, Amir Peretz, and Binyamin Ben Eliezer have all sworn to run until the end.
Barak is in a trap. Some in the party have called his move a ‘coitus retreat’: He ran and told his friends about his support for Peres, but Barak didn’t finish off the Labor party, and didn’t eliminate other candidates, as he had hoped.
This failure is harming him, and has forced him into a single, undesirable position. If he does not announce that his pulling out of the primaries race, he will face ridicule, and he will therefore announce his unconditional support for Peres, simply, because he has no other choice.
