Dr. Aaron Lerner is co-founder of IMRA, Independent Media Review and Analysis, an Israel-based news organization which provides an extensive digest of media, polls and significant interviews and events relating to the Israeli-Arab conflict. imra@netvision.net.il
Difference between Sharon-Peres and Netanyahu or Landau is fundamental
By Dr. Aaron Lerner
September 23, 2005
Are efforts to clip Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's wing just a matter of a combination of groups interested in punishing Sharon for defying his Likud Party when he implemented the policies he ran against in the last elections (as well as some who see this as an opportunity to elect a contending candidate) or is this also a battle over present and future policy?
Many Israeli political media commentators contend that there is no significant difference between the Likud candidates vis-a-vis post retreat policy. Thus they recommend that the choice of the Likud candidate be driven exclusively by poll results indicating that Sharon would bring more mandates to the Party in the next Knesset elections if elections were held
today.
That's "held today". And "tomorrow" may be very different from "today". Many of the same people who now tell pollsters they prefer Sharon may very well do something radically different in the voting booth if by election day the security situation deteriorates -- thanks to Sharon's retreat.
But beyond the efficacy of polling today to project national election outcomes many months now, the assertion that there is no significant difference between the Likud candidates vis-a-vis post retreat policy is simply false.
The central feature of Mr. Sharon's retreat from the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria is that it was carried out without a clear vision of an acceptable post-retreat environment and how to reach it.
Mr. Sharon has opted to appoint none other than VPM Shimon Peres, a man who, over the course of Oslo, has spent more time being an apologist for PA noncompliance than as an advocate for Israel's security interests, to take responsibility for setting and implementing post-retreat policy.
Peres' ostensibly rhetorical defense of Israel's hasty retreat from the Philadelphi Corridor despite the consequential flooding of Gaza with weapons ("what was the alternative?") last week has already set the tone.
The difference between Sharon-Peres and Netanyahu or Landau on post-retreat policy is not a matter of nuance. It is fundamental.
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