HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK ---------------------------
['ultra rightists' demand immediate genocide, 'conservatives' favour a more gradual approach while the labour 'doves' plea for moderation] Rightists quit Israel's unity government By Charles A. Radin, Globe Staff, 3/12/2002 EL AVIV - The political partners that advocate the hardest line against Palestinians in the occupied territories withdrew last night from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's national unity coalition, a development that many political activists and analysts said marked the beginning of the end of Sharon's political life. The revolt on the right occurred despite stepped-up sweeps of Palestinian cities and refugee camps by the Israel Defense Forces, including an incursion late last night into Gaza's Jabalya camp, where Reuters reported that 17 Palestinians were killed. The Israel Beiteinu, Tekuma, and Moledet parties have only seven votes in the Knesset, but their withdrawal from the coalition led by Sharon's Likud party dramatically changes the balance of power. Previously, the Labor party, whose members advocate greater efforts at negotiation and conciliation with the Palestinians, lacked the ability to topple the national unity coalition. With the far right parties out, it now has that power. The right-wing parties withdrew from the government after it took steps to loosen restrictions on Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and to soften Israeli conditions for resuming negotiations with the Palestinians. Subsequently, Sharon and his foreign and defense ministers, both of whom are Labor party members, said last night that they would stop using F-16 fighter jets against targets in the territories. Observers across the political spectrum said the moves to defuse the confrontation with Palestinian leaders while clamping down on lower-level militants were an effort to put Israel firmly in alignment with the United States, as Mideast envoy Anthony Zinni and Vice President Dick Cheney begin new Mideast initiatives. The sustained, intensive military sweeps were directed against known strongholds of terrorist and militant groups, some of which, like Hamas, reject Israel's right to exist. Before last night's assault on Jabalya, a Hamas stronghold, six Palestinians were killed, and more than 1,100 were arrested in the West Bank City of Qalqilya, in the Deheisheh refugee camp in Bethlehem, and in the Bureij camp in the Gaza Strip, according to Palestinian and Israeli military sources. An army spokeswoman said that most of those arrested would be released after questioning. Of 444 arrested in Tulkarem last weekend, she said, only 66 remained in custody, and some of those would be released today. ''Sharon may now be at the end of his road,'' said Shlomo Avineri, a former director general of the Foreign Ministry who is now professor of political science at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. ''He is a low-risk politician, and for the last year he tried to stay on an even keel by not taking risky steps for peace and not taking risky steps with the security situation.'' Gerald Steinberg, director of the program in conflict management at Tel Aviv's Bar Ilan University, said that now ''Sharon is taking a huge risk, because a lot can go wrong.'' But Steinberg called it a prudent risk, because of recent political and military changes. The escalation of violence by both sides in recent weeks has ended any chance of maintaining the previous domestic equilibrium, say many analysts and officials. Sharon's only political hope, they say, is a cease-fire brokered by Zinni, who returns to the region later this week, followed by American success in what is widely assumed here to be an impending strike at Iraq's Saddam Hussein. ''Sharon's policies have been consistent since he was elected: maintain the broadest possible government of national unity, particularly with Labor, and work as closely as possible with the United States,'' Steinberg said. He and other analysts said that, in the long term, Israeli security is more dependent on US action in Iraq than on the current struggle with the Palestinians. If Saddam Hussein is killed or ousted, the Palestinians will lose one of their strongest supporters, and the balance of power in the region will be as it was following the Gulf War, when, as some analysts see it, pro-peace Palestinians gained the initiative over militants, because the Palestinian military position was so weak. ''The Palestinians were on the wrong side'' in the Gulf War of 1991, and ''it cost them a lot,'' Steinberg said. ''Some Palestinians do understand they can't afford to have that happen again.'' The other side of that calculation, said Yuval Steinitz, an increasingly popular member of the Knesset from Sharon's Likud party, is that ''if the Americans believe cessation of [Palestinian-Israeli] violence is a precondition for attacking Iraq and Arafat can prevent that cessation, it will be a great help to Saddam Hussein and others who do not want to see the Americans attack.'' There are deep divisions among Israeli military and civilian officials about both the assaults on the centers of Palestinian militancy and the softer line toward Arafat and the leadership group. A senior Foreign Ministry source affiliated with neither Likud nor Labor, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said last night that there is a growing acceptance in government that ''our retaliation and prevention program has been counterproductive.'' ''It is exacerbating the situation,'' the source said. ''Our task now is to rebuild the ability of the Palestinian Authority to operate.'' Sharon, he said, ''has realized he cannot out-Bibi Bibi'' - hardline former prime minister Benyamin ''Bibi'' Netanyahu, who advocates dismantling the Palestinian Authority - ''and that he can only win if he achieves a cease-fire.'' Yet the prime minister cannot risk the loss of his base in the Likud and among Likud supporters in the broader population, 60,000 of whom gathered in Tel Aviv's Rabin Square last night clamoring for a united national drive for strength and victory. ''Sharon is a pragmatist,'' said Efraim Inbar, director of Bar Ilan University's Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. His concessions toward Arafat are meant both to satisfy the United States and to respond to ''Israeli public opinion that wants both a more forceful Israel and a national unity government.'' ''He is a shrewd politician,'' Inbar said, setting the stage to negotiate, on behalf of a national unity government of Likud and Labor, ''a cease-fire that he does not believe will be implemented by Arafat.'' Charles A. Radin can be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED] This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 3/12/2002. © Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company. --------------------------- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
