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July 23, 2004/Av 5 5764, Vol. 56, No. 44
Sharon seeks to widen coalition
LESLIE SUSSER
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
JERUSALEM - Few doubt that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's disengagement plan has the potential to become a watershed event in Middle Eastern politics, and it already is causing major upheavals in both Israeli and Palestinian politics.
Sharon is being forced to widen his coalition to ensure a parliamentary and cabinet majority for the plan, while on the Palestinian side the impending Israeli pullout from the Gaza Strip has triggered an unprecedented challenge to Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat's authority.
It's not yet clear what kind of coalition Sharon will form, nor how the violence and confusion among the Palestinians will play out. But if Sharon is able to build a strong coalition and if a new, more pragmatic Palestinian government emerges from the present chaos, the current turmoil could be a prelude to a significant breakthrough in Israeli-Palestinian relations.
Given the widespread opposition in his own Likud Party to the plan for Israeli disengagement from the Palestinians, Sharon needs to bring in the pro-disengage-ment Labor Party to ensure approval for his plan in the cabinet and Knesset.
Ideally, Sharon would like to build a secular coalition with the center-right Likud, center-left Labor and centrist Shinui Party, which would command over 70 seats in the 120-member Knesset and see eye-to-eye on a disengagement agenda.
But Sharon's Likud opponents argue that such a coalition would lead to policies too accommodating toward the Palestinians and to a dilution of the Likud's conservative economic policy, which is pulling Israel out of recession.
Worse, they maintain, if Sharon forms a coalition with only Likud, Labor and Shinui, it will be perceived as too middle-class and Ashkenazic, and the Likud would lose at least half of its working-class, Sephardic constituency in the next elections.
Leslie Susser is the diplomatic correspondent for the Jerusalem Report.
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