With his latest political manoeuvre, Sharon continues to ride the wave of post-disengagement glory that saw him hailed recently by British Prime Minister Tony Blair as a ‘war-hero-turned-peacemaker’.
Sharon’s resignation from the right-wing Likud party that he helped found, and the formation of a new “centrist” party, has once more been lauded as a positive development for the peace process. His new “National Responsibility” party will ostensibly be committed to the US-led Road Map, and to making the painful concessions deemed necessary in order to achieve peace with the Palestinians and security for Israel, ones that would have been impossible had he remained part of Likud.
While his independent decision to re-deploy from Gaza was deeply unpopular within his party, and caused the political infighting that partly led to his resignation, the disengagement won Sharon great favour with many ordinary Israelis who neither want to negotiate with Palestinians nor rule over them.
In leaving Likud, Sharon claims to be putting the good of the country ahead of his personal career. “The task in front of us is to create a base for a peace agreement in which we will create the permanent borders of the state while demanding the cessation of terror. The disengagement gave us a historic opportunity. I don’t mean to miss it.”
Sharon’s track record of unilateralism throughout both his military and political careers however, suggests that there are ulterior motives behind his political tactics that go beyond this self-sacrificing desire for peace. The darker reality is that his true ambition lies in being the prime minister who is able to draw the final borders of Israel. In order to achieve this, he must remain in power. His lifespan as the leader of Likud was uncertain following the furore caused by the disengagement, and the long-standing challenge posed by Benyamin Netanyahu. And without Shimon Peres as his coalition partner, the chances of pushing through his vision of “peace” with the Palestinians, was further weakened. His resignation therefore ensures that, should he win the upcoming elections in March, and the odds would appear to be in his favour, he will buy himself enough time in order to achieve this goal.
But what form will his “peace” take? Sharon has already pledged his support to the Road Map, but this claim is incongruous in light of the fact that it was under Sharon that construction of the Apartheid Wall began, and that the expansion of settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem has accelerated, all in direct contravention of the principles of the Road Map.
Talk of Sharon finally seeing the light after 38 years of occupation, and of finally recognizing that a two-state solution is necessary in order to reach peace, is simply the stuff of dreams.
This latest political tactic does not signify Sharon’s intention to carry out far-reaching diplomatic moves in order to achieve peace, as his spin-doctors would have us believe. Rather, by continuing to transform the facts on the ground in such a way, Sharon is hoping, as he himself put it, to “strengthen the control over areas that will constitute an inseparable part of the state of Israel”, including East Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley and land on which illegal settlements have been built, thereby pre-empting the creation of any viable Palestinian state.
The disengagement proved that he could win national and international backing for his political strategies without having to negotiate with the Palestinians. This kind of unilateralism places the future of any peace process in serious jeopardy. And the fact that Sharon can so easily use the disengagement as a smokescreen to divert the world’s attention away from the deepening occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, bodes ill for the prospects of achieving a real and just peace.