In Israel next week, the unimaginable may occur. Ariel Sharon, the pugnacious, aging war hero whose unrelenting hawkishness has long embarrassed and endangered Israelis, will likely be elected prime minister in the February 6 elections. In fact, he seems set to trounce the peace camp's candidate, Prime Minister Ehud Barak.
Just four months ago, Sharon was vilified for ushering in the current wave of violence with a provocative visit to a disputed Jerusalem holy site. Sharon's visit to the site -- known to Arabs as Haram al Sharif and to Jews as the Temple Mount -- did not create the frustrations over stalled peace talks, but it ignited them into the biggest Palestinian uprising since the 1987 to 1993 Intifadah. Daily rock throwing, gun battles and terrorist bombings have killed nearly 400 people, over 300 of them Palestinians. The thin veneer of trust that peacemakers sought to build upon has eroded.
The recent violence has turned Israelis against their left wing prime minister and rekindled hatred of the Palestinians. And ironically, it has sent them running into the arms of none other than the man who sparked the violence: Ariel Sharon.
Two factors explain Sharon's surge in the polls. First, Israelis are furious at Barak. Just a year and half ago, Israelis elected him in a wave of optimism that infected the U.S. State Department and even some members of the Palestinian Authority. In less than two years in office, Barak has alienated even some of his closest allies with a systematic display of arrogance and mismanagement. Barak neglected domestic issues, missed a self-imposed September deadline for a peace treaty with the Palestinians, and offended those closest to him by micro-managing issues under their control without consulting them.
He angered his constituency of left wing, secular Israelis by courting Israel's influential ultra-Orthodox Shas party, only to snub Shas members by leaving them out of core governmental decisions. Politicians routinely pay visits to Shas spiritual leader Ovadia Yosef, who largely dictates the party's political direction. During a series of crises that culminated in Shas leaving the government, Barak neither visited the rabbi nor kissed his hand.
Even those farthest to the left of Israel's political spectrum -- Israel's million Arab citizens -- refuse to support Barak. Lawmakers from Israel's Arab parties have issued a unanimous call to boycott the elections, in protest of Barak's broken promises to fight anti-Arab discrimination and of a police crackdown last fall that killed 13 Israeli Arab demonstrators.
Seven former ministers in Barak's government are now leading the campaign to oust him. Members of his own Labor Party only recently abandoned efforts to replace him with former Prime Minister Shimon Peres as the Labor candidate. Many left-wingers say they simply will not vote, or will cast a blank ballot in protest.
Barak, also an ex-general, is not giving up without a fight. He authorized marathon peace negotiations in the Egyptian resort of Taba last week that negotiators say yielded progress. His campaign ads acknowledge his hubris and broken promises, pledging that a second term would be different.
Still, Barak's failures alone cannot explain why Israelis are supporting a politician as discredited as Sharon. The controversial candidate's return to power has been a strange one. In the chaos that followed the dissolution of the peace talks and the violence that followed, Barak lost the remainder of his parliamentary support, prompting hastily called elections. Sharon's Likud Party was caught with a power vacuum. The Likud had chosen Sharon (an ex-general whom many Israelis blame for their 18-year entanglement in Lebanon) to head the party after its poor showing in the May 1999 elections, precisely because he was not seen as a contender for prime minister. Party members hoped he would act as caretaker while younger, more viable politicians, including Netanyahu, competed for power.
But elections came too soon for the Likud to rehabilitate itself, and no new leader emerged. Netanyahu flirted with a comeback but declined to run in the current elections, preferring to wait for parliamentary elections that would give him legislative support for his policies. That left Sharon, the 72-year old steward assumed to be disqualified because of his past.
The fallout from the current uprising gives Sharon the boost to do the unthinkable: run for prime minister. Moderate and even some left wing voters see the violence as confirmation that the Palestinians were simply using peace talks to gain as much land as possible before launching their next attack. Sharon's lead in the polls reflects his appeal to those voters, deeply skeptical that negotiations by the left wing will bring a sustainable agreement.
Sharon has taken advantage of bitter disappointment in Barak among dovish Israelis and quickly crafted a new image for himself: that of a grandfatherly elder statesman who will bring peace and stability. "Only Sharon can bring peace," claim Sharon's campaign jingles. To watch Sharon's TV ads, one would think the ex-general with the perpetually big mouth had been transformed overnight into a devotee of peace with Israel's Arab neighbors.
The apparent success of Sharon's overnight makeover reveals just how badly the violence of the last few months has fragmented -- and frightened -- Israeli voters. Sharon hasn't changed, but recent violence has caused Israel's political spectrum to shift to the right, placing Sharon closer to center. Even his comments in last week's New Yorker calling Arafat a "liar," "murderer," and "bitter enemy" do not seem to have jarred Israeli voters.
Those seeking proof of how well Sharon has been able to remake his image (and just how deeply Barak has failed as a leader) need look no further than polls showing Sharon leading Barak by up to 20 percentage points. "The situation with the Palestinians, combined with Barak's failures, created a context in which Sharon looks like the least worst candidate," says Tamar Herman, director of a public opinion center at Tel Aviv University. "He is an old man, and shrouded in controversy, but now there is a situation of near-war."
Sharon promises to negotiate with Arafat but has outlined terms of an agreement that the Palestinians would never accept: Israeli sovereignty over East Jerusalem, claimed by the Palestinians as their capital, retention of all or nearly all Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, and a denial of the right of return of Palestinian refugees who fled or were expelled from their homes during the war that followed Israel's creation in 1948. The Palestinians already rejected a more generous offer by Barak last summer.
If a left wing government (albeit with a badly flawed leader at the helm) could not reach a deal with the Palestinians when the region was calm, Sharon is unlikely to succeed now, even if he were willing to make the concessions necessary for peace -- especially because Palestinians will never trust Sharon at the negotiating table.
Sharon's reputation is one of warmongering and brutal war making. Arabs blame him for the 1982 massacre of Palestinian civilians at the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps in Lebanon by a Christian Phalangist militia allied with Israel, an atrocity for which an Israeli committee found him indirectly responsible. Indeed, accusations of atrocities and overstepping authority dogged Sharon throughout his military career.
Sharon has become the Likud Party's resident ideologue. When his party cohorts were seen as making too many concessions to the Palestinians, he would bolster right wing support by disparaging Arabs, encouraging Jewish settlers to grab land where the Palestinians hoped to build a state, or throwing huge parties, under heavy guard, in a home he bought in the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem's walled Old City. In a sign of just how deeply they distrust Sharon (and in contrast to leaders of Israel's Arab parties), Palestinian officials have taken the unprecedented step of calling on Arab citizens of Israel -- whom they consider part of the Palestinian nation -- to participate in Israeli elections and vote for Barak.
Barak has called this election a referendum on the peace process. It seems Israelis think war is unavoidable -- and that they must choose a warrior to lead. Theirs may be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
