Ariel Sharon's Coalition Will Collapse

Don't celebrate yet, Sharon will likely win re-election
or another hard liner.

 

It doesn't work that way.

Direct election of Prime Ministers seems to be a thing of the past, so the people would select new legislators, who would then form a new coalition.

THAT could get ugly. Likud doesn't control enough seats to dictate that Sharon return as Prime Minister. Since Labour is triggering this whole confrontation, it's unlikely they'd form a coalition with Likud. So it's an open question whether a coalition could even be formed.

In any case, this is a cause for celebration only in the sense that it will almost surely turf out Sharon. Beyond that, it's hard to say. But not having a war criminal as Prime Minister has to be viewed as a step in the right direction.

 

The Israeli political system lends itself to chaos, as the hard-line Jewish extremists can get what they want all the time.

Anyway, no government over there can bring peace, so this isn't big news.

 

Rabin brought peace like Spain brought home a World Cup -- oops, hasn't happened yet, has it?

For all of Netanyahu's engagement, Arafat's thugs continued to murder innocent civilians as an instrument of Arafat's crooked government's policy.

If you think any Palestinian "government" that brutalizes its opponents and steals millions from dupes who provide it with unfettered aid that more often than not winds up lining the pockets of unelected brutes in overseas accounts can remotely bring peace, you are disgracefully delusional.

 

Sharon = Arafat

Both are the same to me. Both of them are terrorists. One kills women and children with F16s and the other kills women and children with suicide bombers.

 

Yes, but the F-16s are supplied by the good ol' U S of A. Which means some people on the other side of the Atlantic have blood on their hands.

 

I find that allegation of sockpuppetry offensive. For all i know YOU could be a sockpuppet, albeit one with an unorginial name and 91728 plus posts. But still, the overwhelming doubt remains.

If the government of the United States of America sanctions an arms deal between a U.S weapons firm and a foreign state, then it obvious does a little research before making any decisions. As we're talking about state of the art weaponry here, not bananas. If the U.S government approves of any arms deal with Israel then it know they will be used to kill innocent civilians. Thus the blood still taints their hands.

 

So what? Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia (and others) supply weapons, money, and training for terrorists attacking Israel. They have their side, and we have ours. I really couldn't care less about the fairness of it all.

I'm just waiting for the Palestinians to tell everyone that this situation is merely an attempt by the Israelis to derail the "peace process".

 

Now that Israel's government has collapsed, who will give us our orders?

I mean, the US is controlled by Zionist stooges who get their orders through a secret receiver imbedded in their teeth right? And if the transmitted is in Ariel Sharon's bedroom, who will give us our orders now?

 

Considering the US supplied both the Saudis and Iraq with weapons, maybe it's more accurate to say that "we" (whoever "we" is) are really on "our" side and nobody else's.

 

The difference, of course, being that the Israelis attack known terrorists and occasionally kill women and children by accident (and apologize and compensate the families), whereas Arafat sends suicide bombers into city buses, nightclubs, pizzerias, and childrens' birthday parties, with the intent of killing women and children. But that's just a small difference.


Alex

 

Alex, you have an odd definition of "apologize and compensate", since the usual action Israel takes is to jail and deport people surrounding known terrorists.

IF Israel is less evil than the Palestinians, then it is only by a matter of degree and one so small that it's impossible to see without colored glasses.

Oh, and given that Sharon was convicted and cashiered by his own army superiors, it might ... just possibly ... lend a little more credence to the notion that he actually IS a war criminal.

 

Sharon, for all his faults, is a democratically elected PM and generally behaves as such. Arafat is a terrorist turned kleptocrat. Still, the Israelis have to deal with SOMEONE.

I am glad Labor took a stand, finally, and left the government, but as for future consequences, I'm not so sure it looks good for the Palestinians.

Sharon has ruled out governing in the minority, so there are 2 possibilities. First, bring in the far right parties that would give him a bare majority. He'd still be in charge, have no left flank to worry about, and have some true bona fide nut cases in the cabinet.

Second, new elections. By almost all accounts, Likud will win seats and Labor will lose some.

I do hope that over the next 3 months, Israelis decide to get rid of Likud and vote for the Labor and Meretz parties, but that doesn't look like it's going to happen.

 

DISCLAIMER: I do NOT support Palestinian suicide bombers and I believe that the "intifada" is actually counterproductiove to the Palestinian cause and for that reason alone, in addition to its being utterly immoral, should be dropped. I also believe that it is time for Arafat is a failure and he should ************ off and leave Palestinian leadership to a moderate.

OK, now that I've issued the necessary disclaimer to hopefully prevent the usual strawmen, I can say that in addition to causing "collateral damage" (ie, dead children and other non-combatants), Israel has deliberately engaged in an economic war against the Palestinians in order to keep them from gaining economic self-sufficiency and to try to break their spirits. Of course, an economic war does not provide TV cameras with images as arresting and emotional powerful as a bloody pizzeria, so the media has an easier job ignoring it but it is real nonetheless, it is still evil and its human costs are just as high as suicide bombings.

During the first 26 years of the Israeli occupation, prior to Oslo, the economy of the OPT was re-structured and re-oriented to meet Israeli economic and political ends. No "national economy" was allowed to develop in the OPT and there was an explicit rejection of all forms of development. In 1985, then Minister of Defense, Yitzhak Rabin, said: "there will be no development in the Occupied Territories initiated by the Israeli government, and no permits given for expanding agriculture or industry which may compete with the State of Israel."

In concrete terms, Israel's economic policies towards the OPT prevented the development or expansion of local industry and agriculture while re-orienting Palestinian labor away from domestic production towards work in the Israeli economy. By 1987, 47% of the Gaza Strip's total labor force was working inside Israel. As a result of these policies, the Palestinian economy on the eve of the Oslo process was unable to generate domestic employment and was largely dependent on wages earned from work inside Israel.

The Palestinian economy also suffered from a chronic trade deficit and a myriad of trade restrictions. Since most exports and imports occurred in trade with Israel, the local economy became deeply tied to economic conditions in Israel not only for employment but also for production, trade, and consumption. In fact, the economy of the Occupied Territories was reduced to being a marketplace for Israeli products by day and a dormitory of low-cost labor for Israeli employers by night.

According to Meron Benvinisti: "While a better living standard was meant to diminish nationalist aspirations and contain violence and popular resentment through a policy of economic appeasement…the weakening of the economic base was meant to create ties of dependence that would protect Israel's economic interests by eliminating any threat of competition with, or cost to, the Israeli economy and give Israel complete control over the [occupied] territories' productive resources and their economic growth potential."

Israel also used the pre-Oslo years to systematically confiscate Palestinian resources and land, much of which was used to settle Jews in the OPT, thus making it virtually impossible for any Palestinian national state to form in the West Bank and Gaza. By the time the first Intifada began in 1987, over 52% of the land in the West Bank and 30% of the land in Gaza had been confiscated for military use or for Jewish settlements.

Israeli governments and various NGO institutions had spent more than $1.5 billion to settle Jews in the OPT. There were some 2,500 Jewish settlers in Gaza, 0.4% of the total Gaza population. These Jewish settlers consumed nineteen times more water per capita than the Palestinians in Gaza. The settler-to-land ratio in Gaza averaged 2.6 acres of land per capita as compared to .006 acres per capita for Palestinians.

In the 20 years of Israeli rule from 1967-87, residents of the OPT paid Israel a net "occupation tax" of $800 million, two and a half times as much as the entire Israeli government investment directed at Palestinians in the territories over that period. In 1987 alone, Israel spent $240 million on services and development for Palestinians in the OPT but collected $393 million in taxes.

Further economic losses were incurred during the first Intifada and the Gulf War, and by the time the Oslo Accords were signed, a grave economic imbalance existed between the two parties. Several economic indicators summarize the situation. In 1993, per capita income in Israel was $13,880 while it was $2800 in the West Bank and $2400 in Gaza. Unemployment in Israel was 7.5% compared to 45% in Gaza and industrial production in all the OPT totaled some $85 million, less than that of one medium-sized Israeli firm.

On the eve of Oslo, Israel strengthened the policy first implemented in 1991 of introducing a restrictive permit system and a policy of "closure". External closure cut the OPT off from Egypt, Jordan and Israel inside the Green Line, and thus from the rest of the world. Internal closure cut areas of the OPT off from one another. Palestinian unemployment thus increased as ten thousands of Palestinian workers have now been separated from their low-wage jobs in Israel. Many of these jobs were permanently lost as Israel imported foreign laborers. According to the UN, the number of unemployed persons rose from an average of 33,900 during 1990-1993 to an average of 81,3000 in 1994-1998 - an increase of 139.1%.

Land confiscation increased during the Oslo period. From the beginning of Oslo in September 1993 until the start of the second Intifada in September 2000, successive Labor and Likud governments in Israel confiscated Palestinian land at the fastest rates since the occupation began in 1967. Settlement building also accelerated the number of illegal Jewish settlers in the OPT from 270,000 before Oslo to around 400,000 today, including over 200,000 in East Jerusalem. Just before the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, the Israeli settler population in East Jerusalem overtook the Palestinian population. In the first half of 2000, settlement construction increased 96% over the same period in 1999 (this was under the Labor government of Barak). Expansion of settlements was accompanied by increased bypass road construction. These projects required the demolition of Palestinian homes, destruction of agricultural land and confiscation of other natural resources, such as water and stone quarries.

All of these policies led to increased fragmentation of Palestinian territory into hundreds of non-contiguous units. This fragmentation led to the duplication of services in each enclave and the localization of the Palestinian economy as trade between Gaza and the West Bank, and even within the West Bank, became increasingly difficult. The Palestinian economy became even more vulnerable to external shocks as any improvements in the areas of trade, employment, foreign investment and service delivery were dependent on the loosening of closure.

The economy was even further hampered by the corruption and monopolization of the PA. These trends were tolerated or even encouraged by donors funneled aid into the OPT, much of it into the executive branch of the PA so as to prop up their "partner" in the Peace Process and allow him the means to crack down on any dissent to Oslo.

The new economic model championed during the Oslo period was one of "closure-free" trade zones which would allow Israeli capital to exploit Palestinian labor in export processing zones along the Israeli/Palestinian border. As Shimon Peres once said, "If you can't take the Palestinians to work, take the work to the Palestinians."

Although most sectors of the Palestinian economy suffered under Oslo, individuals from the elite classes on both sides of the Green Line benefited. Collaborative business ventures were set up by members of the Oslo negotiating teams in which Palestinian suppliers with exclusive rights would arrange deals with Israeli producers for a given product (such as cement), forcing small and medium-size Palestinian businesses out of the market. Ruchama Marton of Physicians for Human Rights-Israel called Oslo a "peace of the rich," not a "peace of the brave."

Many years and many unfulfilled agreements later, the PA has "autonomy" in only 17.1% of the West Bank (the area designated as "Area A"). In other words, Israel retains full control or security control in 82.9% of the West Bank. However, even in Area A real autonomy remains elusive. The PA has no control over security, settlements, foreign relations or water, even in Areas A. Furthermore, the Oslo accords passed along the most costly tasks of governing to the cash-strapped PA such as education, health care and transportation without passing over the means to develop and deliver these services. Finally, the Israeli Army has shown on several occasions that it has the ability and the political will to enter A Areas.

By the time the "Intifada" broke out, the infrastructure of economic warfare was in place and collective economic punishment as a means to bring the Palestinians to their knees was relatively quick and cheap to implement. Experience with comprehensive closure had laid the ground for the current almost total blockade and siege. The fragmentation of the OPT had been deeply entrenched through settlements, bypass roads and closures. Furthermore, Israel could give up the approximately 60,000 workers with permits which used to work in Israel before the Intifada because Israel had discovered for quite some time that Palestinian labor was indeed expendable - and could be easily replaced by foreign labor, which proved to be cheaper than Palestinian labor since withheld benefits did not have to be remitted (as they did in the case of the Palestinians to the PA).

Next, the international community showed their tolerance for economic warfare during Oslo and had supplemented closure with donor aid. Although much of this aid was earmarked for "development" most of it was used to prop up the institutions of the PA and to deliver emergency such as short-term job creation and food packages. Since the beginning of the Oslo process $3.5 billion dollars has been invested in the OPT.

Israel's economic policies in the OPT have not been condemned as human rights abuses and have not raised much media attention. Furthermore, "security" was narrowly interpreted as an Israeli rather than a Palestinian problem: a military and not an economic problem.

70% of the rural Palestinian population has no access to hospital care, the unemployment rate has risen to around 50% in the OPT, the yearly per capita income in Palestine has fallen to $800 (as compared to $18,000 in Israel) and the water sector has been severely damaged.

Inside Israel, economically marginalized communities have become the secondary victims of Israel's occupation and siege in the OPT. In 2000, Israel's annual defense budget was about $7 billion (backed by $3 billion in aid from the United States)15. However, additional funds have been requested from the Knesset to fund the current military and economic war, including a recent request for 1 billion NIS. The result is inevitably cuts in social spending and benefits which disproportionately impact Israel's most economically and politically vulnerable sectors including Palestinian and Mizrahim who comprise the majority of the working-classes and poor communities.

Out of 32 unemployment strickened communities 22 are Palestinian (who compose the first 12 with an average of 20% unemployment while most of the others are "development towns" populated largely by Mizrahim. In many respects, economic warfare is a double-edged sword. It has actually backfired on the Israeli people both with regards to it being one cause of the current violence and because Palestinians can be used as a cheap source of labor to compete with the Israeli working class.

 

This is exactly why I'm upset "Labor took a stand." They lost the last election and there's no way to change that. Which gives them (or, more accurately, Ben-Eliezer) a choice: they (he) can either gripe about it from the outside of affect change from the inside. Their influence in the national unity government was not great at times - but frankly, that befit a party whose prime ministerial candidate got 42% of the vote. Nevertheless, Ben-Eliezer was defense minister. He controlled the army. If he really was serious about dismantling settlements, he could have at least started by authorizing an "Operation Zionist Discipline," dismantling the illigal outposts that settlers have been setting up - draining money from the Israeli economy as 18-21 year old kids are forced to defend them. As the Palestinians have shown the world, national liberation movements fail when they don't have discipline. The same will happen to the Jewish national liberation movement if its extremists don't have the discipline to stay on the settlements that have been authorized by the Israeli government. He didn't have to leave the government to take a stand.

But even if Ben-Eliezer didn't have the guts/political power to authorize such an operation, he still had some ability to prevent Sharon from shooting himself in the foot, something the Mukata siege proved he is still prone to doing. I think the fact that Sharon only had that one major screwup in the last 20 months is due more to Ben-Eliezer's moderating influence than Sharon's own personal discipline. Minimal influence is always better than no influence. And certainly better than trading that minimal influence with the far-right. Now, instead of seeing Ben-Eliezer and Peres at his side, Sharon is gonna see Mofaz and Avigdor Lieberman. Frankly, for the first time in the Sharon administration, I'm afraid that he's gonna do something completely irreversably stupid - invading Beruit level stupid. Maybe this will help Labor in the next election - and it certainly will help Ben-Eliezer. But the future of the Zionist movement, the Jewish national liberation movement, is far more important than politics.

 

I thought he was done for incompetence more than anything else. Or a failure to restrain - I doubt he ordered the massacre or knew about it in advance. I'd compare this to Lt. William Calley's commanding officer - well, a couple of levels above. Whichever general it was can't possibly have said "Massacre every living thing in My Lai," but he is ultimately responsible.

The only way I can even theorize that Israel is indistinguishable from the Palestinians is if you lump in settler terrorist groups with "Israel." And the more Sharon and Likud defend settlements that are clearly illegal, the harder it is to make the distinction. Scumbags like Revenge for the Children don't help, to say the least.

But the differences are vast. Palestinian terrorism is its full and only policy. There's little, if any, reason to believe that they've reconciled to the existence of the state of Israel, and their suicide bomber policy is simply obscene. Their willingness to spread idiotic lies and rhetoric about, say, the Jenin "massacre" is as troubling as the willingness of people to believe it. If any other country but Israel had such a neighbor, the war would be as merciless as it would be uncontroversial.

If Israel truly wanted to commit Nazi-esque atrocities on the West Bank, what's taking them so long? Their deep concern about their standing in world opinion and the United Nations?

 

DISCLAIMER: I do NOT support Palestinian suicide bombers and I believe that the "intifada" is actually counterproductiove to the Palestinian cause and for that reason alone, in addition to its being utterly immoral, should be dropped. I also believe that Arafat is a failure and he should piss off and leave Palestinian leadership to a moderate.

OK, that said, I can get to Dan's questions....

Their deep concern about Amercian aid and funding? The fact that they don't have to resort to such things as they're already on top and have much to lose? When they weren't on top, they had no qualms about resorting to the kind terrorist activity that is normally considered by Americans to be an inherent trait of Arabs alone (see "Begin, Menachim").

[edit] I do not believe that most Israelis want to "commit Nazi-esque atrocities" against Arabs although I'm sure a minority wouldn't mind. I also believe that most (but not all) Palestinians have reconciled themsleves to Israel's right to exist and, if given a workable deal that won't put them under effective Israeli control and would be economically viable, would accept peaceful co-existence.

The trouble is that there is an extremist minority both within and outside both groups who are currently driving this cycle of violence. Not only are Sharon and Hamas to blame but Iraqi and Saudi Muslim extremists and European and American Zionist (I know that's a loaded label, but I'm stuck for a better term) extremists who fund the native extremists share blame for the violence. [/edit]

 

That's an interesting insight I've never seen before. Please tell us more.

 

Wow, you have cocksuckers call your house? Is that anything like the pop-ups I get when I'm on the 'net at midnight?

Those girls seem really nice, letting me watch them in their homes.

 

Just close your eyes and pretend it's someone else. It'll feel the same.

Umm, err, that's what I've heard anyway, heh heh.

 

Like Joe, I feel the need to issue a disclaimer here:

I do not sympathize with Palestinian terrorists. What they do is reprehensible. I merely feel that actions that the Israeli government has taken over the years have contributed to feelings of hopelessness among Palestinians. To a certain extent, you reap what you sow. Are the Israeli people “getting what they deserve”? Most emphatically NOT. But there are actions that the Israeli government has taken that exacerbate the situation. Assassinating terrorists and their families indiscriminately with a one-ton bomb does not help the situation.

Ok, that said, here are a few points:

It was “failure to restrain”. Turning a blind eye is not a morally defensible position. It’s also the fact that he tried to assassinate Arafat several times, and has publicly bemoaned the fact that he missed. It doesn’t lend one confidence that he’s able to approach matters concerning the Palestinians with any kind of equanimity.

Precisely my point. But you do raise a valid issue. I shouldn’t condemn “Israel”. That’s not fair to the citizens of that country and tars with an overly broad brush. It would be better to say that I find the leaders of Israel to be morally abhorrent, and their policies equally abhorrent. Should the Israeli people choose a different leader, one who did not espouse the destruction of their neighbors, then I’d feel differently.

I think that’s oversimplifying, but all too close to the truth. It’s clear that there’s no hope, and no reason for hope among the Palestinians. Critical to the solution of the problem is re-instilling a sense of hope. Give them something to live for. As long as they’re better off dead, there’s never going to be peace.

This is true. I’m not sure that Sharon and his ilk are reconciled to the existence of the Palestinian people. Suicide bombing is obscene. Policies that lead to the complete destruction of hope among occupied peoples and foster a desire for revenge at any cost are no less obscene.

Such as the Gulf of Tonkin incident? Lies and rhetoric only have power as long as they are believed. Besides, I completely discount anything coming out of the PA’s pr machine. What bothers me is the reports coming from neutral reporters and UN observers. That makes things a little less one-sided, not so?

There is no doubt in my mind whatever that Sharon is both perfectly capable, and perfectly willing, to commit Nazi-esque atrocities on the Palestinian population. I think it is exactly his deep concern about the perceptions of the United States that keep him from doing it. He knows good and well that we’ll cut him adrift if he steps over the line. You’ll note that as soon as Powell said something about Arafat being necessary to the peace process that Sharon moderated his talk to “exile” and “irrelevant”. He figures if he can talk us into supporting exile as an option that he’ll be free to kill Arafat at his leisure. Never doubt that Arafat’s death is Sharon’s primary goal.

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All THAT said, here’s a point from yet another Dan that I’d like clarification on:

I don’t know what the goals and future of the “Zionist” movement are—or should be. A Jewish state exists. It’s stable, and self-governing. Security is obviously the major concern—how to address that seems to be a major question. What goals and future should the Zionist movement have? This is a genuine question—I’m not trolling to start a flame war here.

 

The first and formost goal: survival. Israel is the only country in the world which has neighbors that loudly clammor for its destruction. It also happens to be one of the smallest countries in the world - 9 miles wide at one of its most populated points (pre-'67). That's a very dangerous combination. As an Iranian cabinet minister (I forget exactly who, but I could find out if pressed) recently noted, it only would take one nuclear bomb to destroy virtually the entire country.

In order to accomplish survival, it needs to do a two main things. As you pointed out, the first and most obvious is day to day security for all of its citizens - whether they live in Tel Aviv or Netzrim (a Gaza settlement). And in order to do that, it can't have new settlements popping up every day in the West Bank. You have to pick your spots - you can't secure the entire West Bank (or Judea/Samaria, whatever people want to call it). An immediate pullout from the settlements would be disasterous - a message that you CAN achieve political goals through terror. But letting individual citizens write their own infrastructure policy (building their own settlement outposts) would be equally disasterous - and cripple the military.

In the long term, I believe Israel must achieve a political agreement with the Palestinians - something along the lines of 95% of the West Bank, 100% of Gaza, and some partition of sovereinty in an otherwise open Jerusalem. By long term I mean several years off - to say the least, you can't have an open Jerusalem during war. But propping new West Bank (Judea/Samaria) settlements up left and right will only exacerbate the difficulty of dismantling settlements once a final peace accord is reached.

There is no reason for perpetual rule over (most of) the West Bank and Gaza. As I heard Israel's consul general in NY say once "The Palestinians hate our guts, and frankly, we don't think too highly of them either." In the long-term, an Israeli presence in Jenin, military or otherwise, doesn't do any good for either the Palestinians or the Israelis. I think Israel is justified in demanding minor modifications to the pre-67 border, especially concerning Jerusalem. I think Israel is justified in demanding some form of security over the future Palestinian-Jordanian border (as, probably, is King Abdullah). In other words, I think Ehud Barak's offer in July, 2000 was very fair. But Israel's long-term survival is dependant on getting out of as much of the West Bank and Gaza as possible - giving the Palestinians a chance to blossom their own deserts - and focusing on building a greater civil society at home. Like quarreling siblings (which, according to Jewish theology, Jews and Arabs are), Israelis and Palestinians need some temporary seperation to reduce tensions. But eventually, I'd like to think the Israeli consul general's comment about Israeli-Palestinian relations will look as dated as an 18th century assessment of English-French relations.

As you noted, Zionism has had great successes. But the success will only be complete when "exchanges" with its neigbhors include agricultural equipment and laptops instead of bombs and missles. Only then will Israel's permanent existance be assured. But we haven't reached that point yet. So the Zionist movement is still a work in progress...