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Friday August 27, 2004

Sharon weighs his coalition options — all risky

by leslie susser
jta

jerusalem | Ariel Sharon has been weighing the options for his government and “disengagement plan” since his humiliating defeat at last week’s Likud Party convention, but none of the alternatives looks particularly good.

Formally, the convention merely voted against continuing coalition talks with the dovish Labor Party. But the subtext of the vote was clear: Hawkish party members are intent on preventing the Israeli prime minister from going ahead with his plan to pull Israeli troops and settlers out of Gaza Strip and the northern West Bank next year.

In the wake of the vote, Sharon retired to his Sycamore Farm to consider his next move. There are no easy options. Among the possibilities:

• Stumble on with the minority government he now has, but that would make carrying out the disengagement plan virtually impossible.

• Continue coalition negotiations with Labor in defiance of the Likud convention decision, but that almost certainly would draw fierce opposition in both parties.

• Try to build a stable coalition with the fiercely secular Shinui Party and the fervently religious parties, a daunting task.

• Bring in the fervently religious and the far-right instead of Shinui or Labor — which likely would be the final blow to Sharon’s disengagement plan.

If there’s no simple route to beef up his shaky coalition, precipitating early elections won’t be easy for Sharon either. Given the current turmoil in Likud, Sharon wouldn’t be sure of winning the party nomination for prime minister.

If he splits the party to run at the head of a centrist alliance composed of Likud breakaways, Labor and Shinui — a realignment so profound that pundits have labeled it the “big bang” of Israeli politics — Sharon would be embarking on a political adventure, the results of which no one can foresee.

Should Sharon decide to persist with his minority government, he first will have to shore up his position in his own party. That would entail making deals with Likud strongmen like Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom.

For a proud man like Sharon, that would be the ultimate humiliation — not to mention the fact that neither prospective ally is enamored of the disengagement plan.

Sharon’s preferred government remains a national unity coalition with Labor. The first thing he did after retiring to his farm was to send a message to Labor leader Shimon Peres saying that he wanted to continue coalition talks, the Likud vote notwithstanding.

The only way out for Sharon, political analyst Ben Caspit wrote in the Ma’ariv newspaper, is for him to “rock the boat.” One way of doing this would be to go to new elections.

A radical solution for Sharon would be to trigger the “big bang” and form a centrist electoral alliance incorporating his wing of the Likud, Labor and Shinui, running together on a pro-disengagement ticket.

Polls show such an alignment would win about 60 Knesset seats. That would give a new Sharon-led government the political base for disengagement and more.

Leading analyst Nahum Barnea wrote in the Yediot Achronot newspaper: “This plan did not have much chance to start off with. Now that the three old men are battered and beaten, the chances are even smaller.’’

Leslie Susser is the diplomatic correspondent for the Jerusalem Report.

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