There was I thinking it was looking like a slow news day when, apparently, Israel drops a political bombshell on the Palestinians by voting against the establishment of a Palestinian State.
Except it wasn’t quite the Israeli government but the Likud Party and, on second sight, it wasn’t quite such a bombshell either. However the development deserves comment if only for the brows it appears to be furrowing round the Blogosphere. General opinion seems to be that it is a serious blow to the prospects for peace and a snub to Washington. I beg to differ.
No, the vote by the Likud Central Committee (59% to 41%) was actually a re-affirmation of a long-time plank of the Likud manifesto that there shall be ‘no Palestinian State West of the Jordan and it is a posture that says far more about Likud in-fighting than it says either about the ‘Peace Process’ or Washington.
Ariel Sharon is in the peculiar position of riding high in the opinion polls whilst appearing as a dithering embarrassment to many within his own party. Sharon had actually abandoned the above-mentioned Likud principle whilst in power because that’s the kind of thing leaders have to do in the cut-and-thrust of diplomacy and compromise. But it is meat-and-drink for his arse-kicker-in-chief, Benyamin Netanyahu, Likud’s blue-eyed boy, who has made no secret of the fact that he has his sights firmly set on the cat-bird seat. It was Netanyahu that sponsored the motion and, to everyone’s surprise (maybe even his own) actually won it.
It makes little material difference to facts on the ground. Until there is a change of Palestinian leadership then all talk of a Palestinian State anywhere remains so much moonshine. Likud’s reaffirmation of its traditional hard-line stance does not represent a change of heart or policy but rather a formalisation of extant positions. It will make a material difference to the bit of ground on which Sharon is standing for it’s a humiliation that will remind him that he cannot take his own party’s support for granted nor ignore the theatrically ferocious Netanyahu snapping at his heels and every other part of his anatomy.
I have read that this shows that Netanyahu is even more hard-line than Sharon but that is a simplification. Netanyahu is not in the hot-seat so he has the licence to act as man-of-the-hour for the party faithful and play the firebrand. Were he to find himself back in the premiership again, he would have to play the International Statesman and that means confronting and making hard choices. The same kind of hard choices Sharon had to make.
President Bush may well be losing sleep tonight, but not over this.
