"A calamity for Israel"
Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post writes of the political situation in Israel after Ariel Sharon. He believes Sharon's stroke "could prove to be one of the great disasters in the country's nearly 60-year history".
I fear this is right. Sharon, not once but twice a discredited figure in Israeli politics, turned out to see more clearly than anyone the opportunities and the preconditions for peace. I had hoped that this new political initiative, Kadima, would forge a 'vital center' in Israeli politics to supersede a hopelessly fractured party system. Krauthammer argues, rightly and dispritingly:
Kadima represents an idea whose time has come. But not all ideas whose time has come realize themselves. They need real historical actors to carry them through. Sharon was a historical actor of enormous proportion, having served in every one of Israel's wars since its founding in 1948, having almost single-handedly saved Israel with his daring crossing of the Suez Canal in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and now having broken Israel's left-right political duopoly that had left the country bereft of any strategic ideas to navigate the post-Oslo world. Sharon put Israel on the only rational strategic path out of that wreckage. But, alas, he had taken his country only halfway there when he himself was taken away. And he left no Joshua.
Of Sharon, I wrote a column in The Times last summer arguing that he had a shrewder assessment of how to realise the aims of an eventual Palestinian state alongside a secure Israel than his foreign critics generally allowed for:
Mr Sharon ... has taken the Right an important stage on from merely accepting the need for negotiations with the Palestinians, and has acknowledged that what he explicitly terms the “occupation of the West Bank” is untenable for Israel and for the Palestinians. His security measures have reinforced a consensus among Israelis for a strategy of defensive deterrence, withdrawal from settlements in Gaza, and direct negotiations for a Palestinian state. The prerequisites for a final settlement include Israelis’ confidence in the ability of the Palestinian leadership to crack down on terrorism and to make their administration of Gaza a success. Israel will feel secure enough to withdraw to the pre-1967 boundaries only when it no longer believes they are continuously threatened. On any realistic assessment, this will take time.
It would have been hastened with a strong centre in Israeli politics. That may not now prove possible.
