http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/comment/0,10551,655781,00.html

Sharon must go

Israel's leader is now an obstacle to peace

Leader
Saturday February 23, 2002
The Guardian

One important element was missing from Ariel Sharon's speech to the Israeli nation this week: an offer to resign. Like his old enemy, Yasser Arafat, the Likud prime minister is now overwhelmingly part of the problem, not part of the solution.

His year in office has brought a steady deterioration in Israel's security situation, the very opposite of what he promised voters. Improved security was his key pledge: indeed, it was perhaps the only persuasive argument for supporting him and, in doing so, many Israelis seem to have closed their eyes, crossed their fingers and hoped for the best. Their collective gamble has not paid off. Mr Sharon has not delivered. For this reason alone, he should go.

Mr Sharon's unimaginative, heavy-handed tactics in the occupied territories have brought a rising toll of Israeli army and Jewish settlement casualties, while the civilian population of Israel itself has become increasingly vulnerable to suicidal attacks. One result has been a groundswell of vocal opposition among army reservists and middle-ranking officers to the mindless immorality of what they are being asked to do in the West Bank and Gaza.

Another outcome, evident in recent weeks, has been an overdue faltering revival of the peace movement and of an Israeli left shattered by the failure of the Barak government and Labour's subsequent decision to go into coalition with the Likud and its far-right political allies. Mr Sharon, in the highest political office, has proved to be just as divisive a figure as he was in his defence ministry and army days.

Half of Israelis, according to a recent poll, believe the prime minister's policies are bankrupt, that he has failed to articulate a viable way forward; that he has, in short, simply lost the plot. Mr Sharon asked Israelis in his speech to rally round and present a united front. But he, more than any other single individual, has helped to divide them. In this there is once again a striking similarity with Mr Arafat and the splintered Palestinian factionalism over which he presides. For these reasons, too, Mr Sharon should go.

Mr Sharon's 12 months of mayhem have also shaken and deeply distressed Israel's supporters abroad while hardening the resolve of the country's enemies. Fears about a rising tide of anti-semitism in western European countries, including Britain, stem in part from an over-defensiveness among non-Israeli Jews who dislike what Mr Sharon does, but resent the current torrent of inter national criticism even more. But as people such as the leading academic, Avi Shlaim, rightly point out, the root of the problems facing Mr Sharon and the Israeli nation is no mystery. It is the continuing occupation of most of the Palestinian territories captured by force of arms in 1967.

And as Yossi Beilin, the veteran Oslo negotiator says, this problem is far from insuperable. "We saw how close we were to peace," he said in a recent interview, referring to the Taba negotiations in January last year. "We can go back there tomorrow." But Mr Sharon, rooted in his own bloodied past and devoid of the "new thinking" for which Kofi Annan plaintively calls, seems to be incapable of doing so.

In his speech to the nation, he offered only more barbed wire, more checkpoints and buffers, more inexcusable bombing of TV and radio stations, more repression, more killing, more misery. And he thereby self-defeatingly invited yet more reciprocal Palestinian violence, even as Mr Arafat cunningly renewed his talk of a ceasefire and Palestinian extremists concentrated their fire in the territories. In Mr Sharon, absence of vision and political ineptitude vie in equal measure. For these reasons as well, Mr Sharon must go.

There are alternatives. There are other paths to pursue. Saudi Arabia is set to promote a reworked version of land-for-peace. The EU is exploring other avenues. The Mitchell proposals remain on the table. Mediators of every hue are on tap, willing to step in. Despite everything, direct Israeli-Palestinian contacts continue. Nor is a Sharon departure the inevitable precursor to Binyamin Netanyahu's return. Labour and the left can, if they can only summon up the resolve and the leadership, prevent that by rediscovering and remotivating that majority of Israelis who told Ehud Barak that they wanted an end to the war even if it meant an end to the occupation. And for their part, the Palestinians, too, should elect a new chief interlocutor, for, as we have said before, Mr Arafat is no longer a credible partner for peace.

Sooner or later, Israel will have to surrender most of the lands it seized in 1967, just as, rightly and voluntarily, it surrendered its Lebanese fiefdom in 2000. This will happen graciously or it will happen bloodily. It is still, just, Israel's choice. But Mr Sharon is clearly not the man to make this leap. His feet are of clay, his shoulders burdened by his own sorry history. He has had his chance. He should stand aside before yet more damage is done.