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October 26, 2001/Cheshvan 9, 5762, Vol. 54, No. 7
Sharon caught between conflicting demands
DAVID LANDAU
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
JERUSALEM - Does Prime Minister Ariel Sharon intend to depose Yasser Arafat and dismantle the Palestinian Authority?
This question was being asked with mounting urgency around the world this week as Israeli tanks and infantry dug into positions deep inside Palestinian territory in the West Bank.
Compounding international concerns, Sharon and other Israeli officials are comparing the Palestinian Authority to the Taliban, saying both are harboring and helping terrorists.
The implication was clear: Just as the United States is resolved to destroy the Taliban, so, too, Israel, exercising the basic right of self-defense, is justified in making war on the Palestinian Authority.
During his visit to Washington this week, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres assured Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell that Israel does not intend either to remove Arafat or to bring about the collapse of the PA
But does Peres speak for Sharon any more?
Relations within the national unity government approached the breaking point this week as the two sides wrangled over the extent and duration of the military operations.
Perhaps it was the serious suspicion Sharon has resolved to destroy Arafat that prompted the U.S. State Department to issue an unusually sharp statement Oct. 22 calling on Israel to withdraw "immediately from all Palestinian-controlled areas."
The United States clearly wants to defuse the Israeli-Palestinian violence as it seeks to maintain Arab support for its international coalition against terror.
Jerusalem was taken aback by the tone of the statement.
Just the same, the Prime Minister's Office rebuffed the U.S. call.
Israel has demanded that the Palestinian Authority extradite those members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine responsible for last week's assassination in Jerusalem of Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze'evi.
On the night of Oct. 22, meanwhile, close to 100,000 people demonstrated in the streets of Jerusalem to demand that the government "Get rid of Arafat and fight terrorism."
As for deposing Arafat, the conventional wisdom among Israelis has long been that any successor to Arafat would be worse. The fundamentalist Hamas, growing increasingly popular in the Palestinian territories, would seize power.
The conventional wisdom still holds true. But the prospect of a Hamas-led Palestinian entity no longer worries some Israeli hard-liners.
At least, they argue, it would not be wooed by Washington and the West to support the U.S.-led international anti-terror coalition.
Moreover, they say, if Arafat is toppled, the West Bank and Gaza Strip might not fall entirely into the hands of the Islamic fundamentalists.
Instead, the areas might be divided into fragments, in which local warlords - some perhaps amenable to Israeli influence - would divide up power.
Where does Sharon stand in this evolving debate?
The answer, according to one well-placed source with frequent access to the prime minister, is that there is more than one Sharon.
According to this source, the premier is torn between competing pressures.
On the personal level, the general-turned-politician does not want to end his long career leading an open-ended war.
At the same time, Sharon has not abandoned his fundamental ideological support for the right of Jews to settle everywhere in the Greater Land of Israel.
Add the U.S. pressures on Israel to back off from its military operations in the West Bank, and you have a truly beleaguered prime minister.
Domestic politics further exacerbate Sharon's dilemma. He wants to maintain the unity government
But he does not want to alienate his core constituency - the Likud, the Orthodox and the settlers.
At the Oct. 22 demonstration in Jerusalem, the leader of the National Religious Party, Rabbi Yitzhak Levy, demanded that Sharon make his choice: If the PA does indeed harbor terrorists, as Sharon has claimed, then the premier must fire Peres, who is visiting Washington making the opposite argument. One government cannot speak with two voices, Levy said.
If Arafat, under this arm-twisting, does take some credible action, this could at least partially defuse Sharon's dilemma.
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