- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has asked President
Moshe Katzav to dissolve the Knesset (parliament). Sharon was not able
to secure the majority needed to build a new coalition after the Labour
Party left the government. He had done everything possible to placate the
far-right and secure the basis for continued government, but to no avail.
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- Sharon nominated the former military chief of staff,
Shaul Mofaz, to be the next defence minister and asked former prime minister
Benyamin Netanyahu to replace Shimon Peres as the foreign minister-placing
those who explicitly rejected the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords in all leading
government positions.
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- Netanyahu insisted that he would only agree to becoming
foreign minister if an early date was set for a general election-February
or March instead of November 2003. Sharon refused to accept Netanyahu's
condition, and asked the right-wing settler party-The National Unity-Homeland
Israel-to join the government and prevent its collapse. Avigdor Lieberman,
the leader of the faction, refused to join the coalition unless Sharon
agreed to launch an unrestricted military campaign against the Palestinians
to destroy the Palestinian Authority, including the expulsion of Arafat.
Sharon could not do this, as the Bush administration insisted that no public
change in policy was made that would cut across its efforts to secure Arab
support for war against Iraq.
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- Sharon thus did not manage to win the required support
of 61 members in the Knesset, leaving him in charge of a lame-duck administration
whose policies can be blocked by his opponents.
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- He had no choice but to call an early election and accede
to Netanyahu's demands. Sharon and Netanyahu are set to contest for leadership
of Likud next month, when the party will decide who will be its candidate
for prime minister.
-
- Current predictions are that Sharon will narrowly beat
Netanyahu in the elections held by the Central Committee. Labour is in
the midst of its own election contest, with both the mayor of the city
of Haifa, Amram Mitzna, and the chairman of the Committee for Foreign and
Defence Affairs of the Knesset, Haim Ramon, leading the former minister
of defence Binyamin Ben-Eliezer in the polls. Present estimates predict
a victory for Likud, but the only certainty is that Israel faces a period
of profound instability and social and political polarisation.
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- Ben-Eliezer was forced to withdraw from the coalition
government due to the mounting opposition of broad sections of the working
class to Likud's economic austerity measures and its war against the Palestinians.
This came to a head over Sharon's commitment to invest hundreds of thousands
of Israeli Shekels in the settlements on the Occupied Territories. Labour
could not continue to support the government without signing its own political
death warrant.
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- Shimon Peres, who led Labour into the coalition with
Sharon and the Likud, wrote in Haaretz, "When the nation has people
hungry for bread, the social issue must be at the top of our agenda. But
it is impossible to correct the social situation without correcting the
economy itself. As long as investments in Israel are not renewed and tourists
don't come back, as long as the flow of capital out of Israel isn't stopped
and budgets are disbursed according to parochial demands, the economy will
not recover. And as long as the security situation is unstable, the basic
conditions for social and economic deterioration will not change."
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- Haaretz, which purports to be the voice of liberal opposition
to Likud, proclaimed that "the collapse of the outgoing government
can only be welcomed. It will be remembered as one of the worst governments
in Israel's history. It must now be hoped that the upcoming election will
produce a coalition wise enough to repair the damage and restore the country
to the right path."
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- But a progressive outcome to the election depends on
a political break by the working class with Labour, which propped up Sharon
until it became impossible to continue to do so.
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- In the right-wing Jerusalem Post, Uri Dan, the Middle
East correspondent of the New York Post and a close friend of Sharon, gave
a fairly accurate account of the service performed by Labour for Likud:
"Only by co-operation in the government with Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
Shimon Peres could Sharon cause the delegitimisation of that other Nobel
winner, Yasser Arafat. The White House is now closed to Arafat, after Peres
himself, in a terrible, historic mistake, opened its gates to Arafat, on
September 13, 1993, during Bill Clinton's presidency. Only together with
Binyamin Ben-Eliezer and Shimon Peres could Sharon restore freedom of action
to the IDF [Israeli Defence Forces] and enable it to pursue the terrorists,
arrest or kill them, leave the West Bank cities and return to them, raid
the Gaza Strip, in other words, wage a round-the-clock anti-terror campaign."
He concluded, "Sharon, in the 20-month campaign he waged as the head
of the national unity government, turned the Labour Party into a duster
he used to erase the Oslo tragedy from the blackboard."
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- The right-wing trajectory of Labour means that the opposition
to Sharon's war and budget cuts is developing largely outside its ranks.
Last week saw a massive peace demonstration in Tel-Aviv, numbering over
100,000. Adam Keller, spokesman for the Gush Shalom pacifist movement,
commented on the absence of leading Labour Ministers and MKs.
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- He wrote, "At least, attending this year's rally-unlike
those of the past two years-did not involve the emotional wrench of having
to listen to a keynote speaker directly involved in the war against the
Palestinians-PM Ehud Barak in the rally of November 2000; Dalia Rabin-Pelosof,
Deputy Defence Minister in 2001...
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- "So, this year's Rabin Rally, seven years after
the murder [of the former Labour prime minister by a rightist religious
zealot], however officially touted as 'non-partisan', was in a way the
first manifestation of a new political reality. In other times, the enormous
sign 'We Believe in Peace' over the podium may have been only a cliché
or pious wish; in the Israel of November 2002 it was just a bit more: a
crowd of about 100,000 mostly young people defying the trend of 'peace
is dead'."
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- The World Socialist Web Site handed out leaflets opposing
war against Iraq, which were read with interest by demonstrators as well
as foreign reporters and tourists. Many people said they already knew of
the World Socialist Web Site and read it on a regular basis.
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- The WSWS interviewed participants at the demonstration.
Most protesters expressed bitterness towards the Labour Party for collaborating
with Sharon.
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- Ami, 26, a student in the University of Tel Aviv, said,
"I can't believe that the Labour Party decided to leave Sharon because
of genuine concern for our future-students, workers, youth and pensioners.
It did it because Labour knows that the Likud will win a serious section
of the Israeli public and the leaders of the Labour Party want to rebuild
their own organisation. Nonetheless, I really believe that this is the
worst government we have ever had and we need to bring down Sharon. A government
with Sharon and the right wing will mark a new period in Israeli politics,
mainly because the budget will abandon the vast majority of the population
and invest the money in the occupation."
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- Debra, 37, a high school English teacher, said, "I
agree that Bush's war on Iraq has nothing to do with questions of 'democracy'
or 'weapons of mass destruction'. Why doesn't the media publish that it
was the US that stood behind [Saddam] Hussein before the 1990s? Why does
the media refuse to acknowledge the fact that this is a war for oil? I
am frightened, mainly because I know perfectly well that if Saddam isn't
in charge in Iraq there it will another dictator, like America did in Afghanistan.
And who promises us that this ruler won't develop weapons of mass destruction
and afterwards will betray its sponsor, the US?"
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- Sylvia, a British journalist, said, "It is great
to read the World Socialist Web Site here! What a lovely surprise! Although
I'm 100 percent Labour, I believe that many things your friends in the
UK are saying are correct. I came to Israel and I'm totally shocked. Israel's
government is throwing the fate of its citizens to hell. The occupation
is the main factor in the collapse of Israel's economy. I didn't see any
Western country with so many elements of social morbidity: poverty, beggary
and starvation. And all of this because Israel wants occupation.
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- "The only way to save the Israeli and Palestinian
people is to go forward to a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital,
alongside Israel."
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- Eitan, 21, is a soldier in the IDF. He said, "I
won't serve the occupation in the West Bank and Gaza. I think that our
rulers are using us as human shields for realising their horrors. We should
bring down Sharon and Arafat. I won't vote Labour, mainly because I think
that it is an elitist party which has totally estranged itself from the
young generation because this is a party of capitalist and robbers! I believe
in a politics of democratic socialism, freedom, civil and human rights.
Rabin led our country towards a social-democratic future, peace and civil
liberties. The only way to kick out Sharon is by building a social-democratic
party that will struggle for peace and liberty."
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