The “bulldozer” sends tremors through Israeli politics

Nov 23rd 2005
From The Economist Global Agenda

Israel’s prime minister, Ariel Sharon, has abandoned his own party in the hope of holding on to power. Opinion polls put his new party, Kadima, ahead of both Likud and Labour

ISRAEL-WATCHERS are now scrambling for new geological metaphors. If Amir Peretz’s victory over Israel’s elder statesman, Shimon Peres, for the leadership of the Labour Party earlier this month was an “earthquake”, as some described it, then how to describe the even bigger upheaval caused by Ariel Sharon, the prime minister? On Sunday November 20th he decided to quit Likud, the party he helped found 30 years ago. The next day he went to the president, Moshe Katsav, to request a dissolution of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. Later that day, the Knesset voted to disband itself. And on Wednesday, Mr Katsav signed an order to call an election on March 28th. Mr Sharon will run in the poll at the head of his own centrist party, Kadima (Forward).

To many, it came as a surprise. Mr Sharon’s position in Likud was thought to have grown much stronger than it had been two months previously, when his plan for withdrawing Israeli settlers and troops from the Gaza strip had been completed. At that time, Binyamin Netanyahu, his erstwhile finance minister, who opposed the pullout along with a dozen other “rebel” Likud parliamentarians, had announced that he would challenge Mr Sharon for the party leadership. But Mr Netanyahu crashed and burned: polls showed that Mr Sharon would beat him easily both for the nomination and among voters in general. And when Labour chose Mr Peretz, who will take the party much further to the left, it arguably fortified Mr Sharon, who within Likud is a relative moderate.

Yet the row over the Gaza disengagement was merely the visible product of a long-brewing division in Likud between pragmatists like Mr Sharon, for whom settlements are chiefly a means to security (and so can be sacrificed to the same end) and Greater-Israel ideologues, for whom they had become central to the idea of the Jewish state. “The party could not have two souls,” says Eyal Arad, an adviser to the prime minister, “and in my view, eventually the split was unavoidable.”

In recent months, the man known as “the bulldozer” for his ability to force his plans through the obstacle course of Israeli politics had become exasperated by the Likud rebels, some of whom had continued to undermine him even after the Gaza disengagement—most recently, blocking some ministerial appointments. He may have feared that Likud would rally behind him for the election and then drop him afterwards. His new party will be made up of people he trusts and feels comfortable with—14 current Likud members of the Knesset (including Ehud Olmert, the deputy prime minister), plus a few outsiders, including former security chiefs and academics, who are expected to run in the election. That alone will make his life far more pleasant. And sticking with his old party would not even have guaranteed a victory. Though recent polls showed that Likud under Mr Sharon would have won more Knesset seats than Labour under Mr Peretz, it still would not have got a 61-seat majority; he would have needed to compete with Mr Peretz to woo coalition partners.

Three opinion polls published on Tuesday, for the Yedioth Ahronoth, Haaretz and Maariv newspapers, all suggested that Mr Sharon's defection from Likud leaves him well placed to win a third term as prime minister. They gave his new party between 30 and 33 seats in the Knesset, compared with 26 for Labour and a mere 12-15 for Likud. However, some cautioned that this initial euphoria for Kadima was likely to cool.

Likud now faces an enervating leadership contest. The front-runner is Mr Netanyahu, who has wasted no time in denouncing Mr Sharon as a “dictator” who “is setting up a party of puppets”. Among those expected to run against Mr Netanyahu are Shaul Mofaz, the defence minister, and Silvan Shalom, the foreign minister.

Whichever party comes out ahead on March 28th, it will need a coalition to get 61 seats. Mr Sharon’s party is expected to take votes away from some of the other small parties that traditionally pimp themselves as coalition partners to the highest bidder. And, unlike most of them, it will have the advantage of holding the centre ground between two harsh extremes: in the red corner, Mr Peretz, who advocates immediate talks on a Palestinian state and aggressive increases in social spending; in the blue corner, a rump Likud made up of anti-disengagement hawks (most Israelis supported the pullout) and free-marketeers like Mr Netanyahu, whose policies as finance minister did much to alienate the poor and make Mr Peretz’s victory possible.

Mr Sharon’s party could join forces after the election with Labour or—less likely, because they hate him so—Likud. Or he might even draw in moderate Knesset members from both parties to lead the government himself. (He appeared on Sunday to extend an offer to Mr Peres, whose political career had seemed at an end after the Labour leadership race.) The idea of Labour and Likud forming a coalition simply to spite and exclude Mr Sharon, though not impossible, seems unlikely. He can probably expect to be at least a kingmaker, if not king.

But in the constant mixing of Israeli politics nothing is certain. And even if Mr Sharon becomes prime minister again, how he governs will be a function of the compromises he has to make with whoever is in his coalition. Between now and election time, everything is up for grabs.

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