The Last of the Patriarchs

Aluf Benn

From Foreign Affairs, May/June 2002

Summary:  Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon faces disaster on two fronts: ongoing unrest from the Palestinians on one side and a disintegrating domestic coalition on the other. Seemingly paralyzed, Sharon has not responded well to either. So far, Israelis have remained mostly loyal to the former general, and Washington has stayed largely supportive. Both those situations could change, however, unless Sharon comes up with a plan. He may already have one in mind, but not one anyone else is hoping for.

Aluf Benn is Diplomatic Correspondent for Ha'aretz, an Israeli daily newspaper. He has covered Israel's foreign policy and the Arab-Israeli peace process since 1993.

THE BULLDOZER

Just over a year ago, on March 7, 2001, Ariel Sharon took office as Israel's eleventh prime minister, having beaten his predecessor, Ehud Barak, in a landslide. Sharon's election seemed like the ultimate expression of Israeli anger, the choice of a public frustrated by the stagnation of the peace process and the violence of the second Palestinian intifada. After all, Sharon, known as "the Bulldozer," was the ultimate hard-liner: the builder of the settlements and a warrior who had fought the Arabs for more than 50 years. Indeed, Sharon had been responsible for some of the most controversial acts in Israel's military history, including its 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Now finally at the helm, he vowed not to negotiate under fire and to fight until terror was defeated. Only then, he promised Israelis, would he make what he called "painful concessions" for peace.

Conditions in Israel are now even worse than when Sharon took office. Palestinian terror attacks occur almost daily and have killed more than 250 Israelis in the past year. Israel has responded with a mix of economic sanctions and escalating military actions. These strikes have included recent, massive incursions into cities and refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza with tanks, troops, and helicopter gunships; Israel even temporarily reoccupied Ramallah with a division-size force. Although more than 640 Palestinians have already been killed in the last year, however, the war of attrition continues with no end in sight. Only a delicate combination of mutual deterrence and international pressure has prevented this low-grade confrontation from exploding into an all-out war.

Meanwhile, Israel's economy has fared no better. Growth has ground to a halt, unemployment has shot up, and the shekel has dropped in value. Israel's man of action has seemed virtually paralyzed in the face of economic and political crises.

And yet even with a national disaster looming on two fronts and no apparent solutions, Sharon remained extremely popular during his first year in office. His job approval rating generally stayed between 50 and 70 percent in weekly opinion polls. Only in late February did his ratings begin to drop below 50 percent. The public must be aware of Sharon's flaws -- after all, his poor job performance is hard to ignore. Yet, apparently convinced that there are no alternatives, Israelis have stubbornly clung to this 74-year-old national father, one of the few figures remaining from Israel's early days.

Sharon, however, has proven unable to translate his remarkably durable popularity into action. Instead, all his energy has gone into fighting for his political survival. The prime minister faces a seemingly insoluble dilemma. He wants to run again in the November 2003 elections, but to do so, he will first have to reaffirm his leadership of the Likud Party. But this means outflanking his rival, former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who has won over many of the party faithful by preaching tougher military measures against the Palestinians. To beat him, Sharon must swing to the right. Yet he remains bound to the left by the need to maintain U.S. support and to hold together his national unity coalition with the Labor Party. Above all, Sharon wants to keep Shimon Peres, a former prime minister and Nobel Peace Prize winner, in office as his foreign minister.

In light of these impossible constraints, it is no surprise that Sharon's first year as prime minister has been characterized by indecisiveness and constant zigzagging between right and left. Urged in one direction by his gut instincts but shackled by politics, even this master tactician seems unable to work out a grand strategy. Instead, Sharon has governed by reaction, not initiative, and has avoided big risks. As a result, he has so far managed to avoid the kinds of major mistakes that marred the tenures of his predecessors, Netanyahu and Barak, and led to their premature downfalls.

In place of vision, Sharon has offered increasing doses of tough language and military blows against the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its leader, Yasir Arafat. And if Sharon has one accomplishment to boast of, it is that he secured strong American backing, which, at least until recently, helped him further isolate his old nemesis, Arafat. Sharon now openly calls for Arafat's replacement -- something that would have been unthinkable only a year ago. Yet while keeping Arafat under virtual house arrest in Ramallah, Sharon also became the first Likud leader ever to agree publicly to the creation of a Palestinian state.

So far, the Palestinians have responded to Sharon's pressure by using the heaviest weapons in their arsenal, from suicide bombings in Israeli cities to indigenously produced rockets. Israel has retaliated with air power, temporary invasions of Palestinian towns, and targeted assassinations of dozens of suspected terrorists. Neither side has managed to win the war or bring it to a peaceful conclusion. Instead, this gradual escalation has only brought the country ever closer to catastrophe.

MAN WITH A PLAN?