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Jonathan Friendly is the national editor of , which owns the weekly Jewish newspapers in Detroit and Atlanta. He is a former journalism professor at the University of Michigan and a former reporter and editor at The New York Times.
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By Jonathan Friendly
February 6, 2004
Who is this new prime minister of Israel and what has he done with the real Ariel Sharon?
Surely the architect of the West Bank and Gaza settlements, the man who urged Israelis to "seize the high places" and build homes on them just four years ago, can't be the same man who told Haaretz's columnist Yoel Marcus on Sunday that "I have given an order to plan for the evacuation of 17 settlements in the Gaza Strip."
And how is conceivable that the former general who has said repeatedly he would not negotiate with terrorists could strike a deal with the Lebanese-based terrorists of Hizbullah to hand over 436 prisoners in exchange for one rogue businessman and the bodies of three soldiers? Isn't this essentially the same group of prisoners that Sharon refused to release to the Palestinian Authority last year when doing so might have propped up a centrist prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, who actually wanted to rein in the Palestinian terrorists?
Something has clearly changed. Whether it is a change for the better or the worse is hard to tell.
We don't buy the theory that Sharon is simply looking to divert attention from the criminal investigations of his campaign finances and of his son's sweetheart deal with a wheeler-dealer who was trying to get Israel to approve a resort development in Greece. If anything, Sharon's accommodation with Hizbullah and his unilateral undercutting of the Gaza settlements are likely to increase his troubles, not reduce them.
The prisoner deal is the more worrisome development. Sharon himself acknowledged that Israel was paying "a heavy price" for what he called "a right and moral decision." Included in the price were two prime troublemakers -- Abdel Karim Obeid and Mustafa Dirani -- who are virtually certain to resume quickly their guerrilla activities.
To be sure, the deal, negotiated over several months with the help of German intermediaries, wasn't all that much of a substantive breakthrough. The bulk of the 400 Palestinians released had just about completed their sentences, anyway, and the deal may also open the door to more information about Captain Ron Arad, an Israeli airman who was captured in southern Lebanon when his plane was shot down in 1986.
But appearances are important. The Middle East is filled with a lot of opportunists who will see in the bargain the opportunity to profit by kidnapping other Israelis. It sets a worrisome precedent that could be applied to American soldiers and civilians in Iraq.
And the timing was awful. The swap went ahead even though two hours earlier a Bethlehem policeman from the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, blew himself up on a bus in Jerusalem, killing 11 others. The message was that terror carried the day.
The Gaza statement seems more forward-looking. It has long been plain hat the 7,500 settlers there do not advance any worthwhile cause for the Jewish state and that protecting them unnecessarily burdens the military. In the end, those settlements are going to have to be uprooted as are some West Bank enclaves that will fall outside the security barrier that is now being completed.
The Gaza relocation process is going to require negotiations with the settlers themselves and with a responsible Palestinian leadership, should that ever emerge. Sharon seemed careful to avoid giving any timetable for the process and insisted that all he had approved so far was planning for the eventual removal of the settlements, not the actual mechanics.
Still, the prime minister, in the interview and in accounts of his briefing of Likud Party members, was more direct about the issue than he had ever been before. Taken with the Hizbullah deal, the action suggests that his vision of how to get some sort of lasting peace with Israel's neighbors is changing.
Given that the old vision wasn't really getting anything and that the Palestinian violence has continued unabated, a shift is clearly needed. We've all given up on expecting that Yasser Arafat will recognize Arik's change, but with luck, the leadership of the Arab world will grab the opportunity to move in positive directions.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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