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Beginning of the end of Likud rule |
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by haaretz via gehrig
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05 May 2004
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"Labor, Yahad, Shinui, One Nation and the Arab parties now have 51 hands in the Knesset. If Labor stops behaving like a rag doll and if Yahad grows larger than the six seats of Meretz in the next elections, the majority public support for a new agenda will bring about the political change that now seems so distant - even without Sharon being indicted." |
Beginning of the end of Likud rule
By Gideon Samet
There's a long list of mistakes Prime Minister Sharon made on the road to defeat in the Likud referendum. And there is one positive outcome - unintentionally, Sharon has clarified what kind of disengagement has taken place between the will of his party and the will of most Israelis. That may be the only revolution he has managed in the three years he has been in office. That important fact in the political landscape can also be seen without the mistakes of the referendum. But the drama of the challenge was necessary to make it stand out with such theatrical sharpness.
The importance of the Likud rank and file's tardiness - the spirit of the times - goes far beyond the realm of once isolated political incident. It means the ruling party has ceased being what it pretended in the last three decades since it first won office in 1977. In the political folklore of the era, the Likud was regarded as a movement reflecting the people. Labor was the one in arrears, except for a brief period of glory under Rabin. People kept disparagingly calling it "the Alignment."
The sweaty passions of the Likud, the popular style, the stormy violence in the party conventions - it was all very Israeli, good and bad. In recent years, add a change in consciousness to that portrait. Two prime ministers from the Likud accepted the basic assumption there wouldn't be any peace agreement without withdrawals and a Palestinian state.
Up until this week the Likud appeared to be a movement capable of setting aside its most sacred-cow principle - the sanctity and integrity of the Greater Land of Israel. There is no doubt that the adjustment to a new national agenda - despite lip service to historical longings - helped the Likud preserve its rule, with a few brief recesses, when the orgy in the territories began to chill.
Sharon would not have won 40 seats in the Knesset last year, partly from voters from the center, if not for relatively moderate parts of the population believing that the movement was changing. "Sharon will bring peace and security" and of course, "only the Likud can do it" were not just brilliant PR slogans.
Only the Likud could do what? It did not improve the economy. Environment makes it yawn. Education has been on a downward slide since it took over. The Likud tried to hypnotize its voters with its ability to bring peace. Sharon added to the promise the image of readiness - not only can he do it, he wants to do it.
Now that faith of hundreds of thousands of Israelis in the Likud's "ability" to do it must be very shaken. The image was erased in one day despite all the successful vaudeville with the U.S. administration, the arm wrestling with Netanyahu, Livnat, and Sharon and the signs of real preparation for disengagement.
The impression of a party that had turned toward political sanity was traded in for the image of a confused party in crisis, contemptuous of its own leader. Particularly harmed was the proven condition for winning power - only a party that aims to please the majority and is not run at the whim of a tiny minority of the public, can indeed win.
That thesis was originally developed in the mid-1980s by Haaretz writer Avraham Shweitzer in his book "upheavals." He predicted the change in the political agenda from focus on the territories to domestic issues, and therefore the return of Labor in the coming decade. Like many scoops, that theory had to wait for confirmation until the rise of Rabin proved it true.
Sharon is now trying to turn the omelet running down his face back into fresh eggs. It won't work. "Disengagement Lite" - a dietetic scramble of kosher and non-kosher foods - won't satisfy the right, or remove Shinui from the government. Like the Queen of England, Sharon the juggler cannot give more than he has.
Labor, Yahad, Shinui, One Nation and the Arab parties now have 51 hands in the Knesset. If Labor stops behaving like a rag doll and if Yahad grows larger than the six seats of Meretz in the next elections, the majority public support for a new agenda will bring about the political change that now seems so distant - even without Sharon being indicted.
Is the Likud referendum a passing incident? It was one of the most important political events of the decade. In a shorter run than may be apparent it may be viewed as the beginning of the end of Likud rule.
(c) 2004, Haaretz
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