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Haaretz: Sharon Shows He Isn't Serious About Concessions |
Current rating: 3 |
by haaretz via gehrig
(No verified email address) |
16 May 2003
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"Without an opposition, without a public that is alert and interested in shaping politics, with a collective memory that gets erased every other day like a diskette, we are traveling on a dangerous road that is heading toward a map of non-agreement." |
Sharon A, Sharon B and the dictator
By Gideon Samet
This week, the prime minister offered a simple reply to a nagging question. The question: When all is said and done, are you serious about those "painful concessions" for peace? The reply: No.
There was a total contradiction, almost an insult to the intelligence, between what he said to Haaretz last month about the need to say good-bye to "some of those places - Bethlehem, Shiloh, Beit El," and his remarks this week to interviewers from The Jerusalem Post ("I'm asking you: Do any of you see such a possibility?").
This is not just Sharon the politician playing another of his little tricks. A week before he meets with the American president, it clarifies the most critical issue on which we are liable to be misled.
Denying any wrongdoing, Sharon says he was misunderstood the first time around. He doesn't have to try too hard when it comes to explaining. Disrespect for the truth has become an orgiastic pleasure in Israeli politics. In the current atmosphere of lies and spin, statements like these don't hold up for more than two days anyway. We all know that nothing was misunderstood. It's like Churchill, pardon the comparison, saying he didn't mean "blood, sweat and tears." What he really meant was "cool, awesome, way to go." What Sharon A said was perfectly clear? Sharon B says you've got to be kidding.
This week, Sharon had another attack of the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde syndrome. It's something he's suffered from for years, but somehow the timing seemed especially bad. Did it have to be right before a tense meeting with Bush? Yet there are more and more signs that the meeting won't be so tense. The president didn't prod Sharon into coming up with any kind of conciliatory gesture to appease his secretary of state, thereby dooming Colin Powell's trip to failure.
But impressions aside, Powell was not just a sneak preview before the decisive presidential meeting next week. Because like the prime minister, Bush has not given any real sign until now that he is truly serious about pushing through an agreement and all that goes with it. Sharon B isn't banging his head on the wall. He knows that progress is being made in toning down and diluting the road map. Eliot Abrams, Bush's ultra-conservative advisor on Middle East affairs, already implied as much during his semi-secret visit to Sharon's ranch three weeks ago.
So, even if Sharon informs Washington that he will dismantle illegal outposts, and makes a big production about dragging half a dozen settlers off some godforsaken hilltop in the territories, he will still remain loyal to his real, uncompromising self. Because the road between a few dummy outposts and uprooting actual settlements is long, and Sharon will never get on the one going to Shiloh and Beit El. He said so, didn't he?
Washington also said what it had to say about Sharon's political shenanigans on the eve of his visit. Official spokesmen expressed dissatisfaction. What else would you expect them to say in response to reporters' questions at the daily noontime briefing of the State Department and the White House? That the president is not concerned? That he didn't pick up the phone to Sharon and rake him over the coals, as he knows how to do when he wants to?
Sharon A will go see Bush next Tuesday outfitted in his disguise. He and his host know there is no majority - not at the top echelons in America and not in the Israeli government - for a hard-nosed plan leading to an agreement. Both countries have a leader today who pretty much does what he wants. What Bush wants is another term of office, which is to say, respect. Sharon doesn't even have that problem.
But around here, things are starting to look bad. Without an opposition, without a public that is alert and interested in shaping politics, with a collective memory that gets erased every other day like a diskette, we are traveling on a dangerous road that is heading toward a map of non-agreement. Ariel Sharon is striding down it, as the dictator of the national outlook. What he says, goes. Read his lips. To Bush's vision, they offer the kiss of death. |
