The question is no longer whether or not Ariel Sharon's "Disengagement Plan" will pass the referendum on it to be held today, but rather by which gap the "plan" will be shot down by the Likud voters. The polls in Israel are showing the opponents to the plan within the Likud outnumbering the supporters by between 2% and 7%, and I have a month's salary on a bet saying the gap will actually be in the double digits. All this, in spite of the fact that almost the entire leadership of the Likud has come out to back and support Sharon on the "plan", some albeit half-heartedly.
In trying to stampede Likud voters into backing approval for his "plan", Sharon is moving from desperation into Orwellism. Last week, in Sharon's first major adventure into the netherworld of Orwellistic Newspeak, he declared that a defeat in the referendum for his proposal would be a "victory for Arafat". By inference, a defeat over Arafat would consist, I guess, of expelling Jewish settlers from their homes and handing over a Judenrein Gaza Strip to the PLO, in which it will organize rocket factories, training facilities and from which it will send out countless suicide bombers.
And someone forgot to tell the Palestinians that passage of the Sharon "Disengagement Plan" would be a defeat for Arafat. Palestinian Media Watch, a watchdog group that documents the contents of the PLO's controlled "Palestinian" media, issued a report that these media unanimously view a passage of the Sharon "plan" as an enormous victory for their "armed struggle" over the Jewish sub-humans and a tremendous achievement; a precedent for the dismantling of all of Israel (Haaretz, April 30).
More importantly, this is actually the very first test in Israel of direct democracy, and the very first time a ballot proposition has been brought before even a part of the electorate (only Likud voters are participating in the referendum, which makes it easier for the lemming politicians to dismiss it as a meaningless gesture). That fact may be even more significant than the actual results of the vote. This could open up incredible new possibilities, if it were to become the precedent for future ballot propositions, in which Israelis actually get to say what they want. Heaven knows where that could lead - maybe even to accountability of court judges!
The fact of the matter is that every single time, without exception, Israeli voters were offered an opportunity to vote for or against "Oslo", they voted against it. And every single time that they voted against "Oslo", the politicians then ignored the public will and carried out "Oslo" appeasements and capitulations anyway.
It all started when Israelis elected Yitzhak Rabin, who ran on a platform declaring unambiguously, "No Deals with the PLO," and then months later spat on the voters and struck the Oslo "deal." By 1996, Rabin had been assassinated by Yigal Amir, and Shimon Peres was beaten in the next vote handsomely by Binyamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu then ran for re-election and lost, but that was because voting for him was no longer voting against Oslo. Netanyahu as Prime Minister had out-Oslo-ed even Shimon Peres. In any case, Ehud Barak won largely thanks to the Arab voters supporting him at the polls.
When Ehud Barak later ran for re-election, he was defeated in a landslide by voters opposed to Oslo. Sharon was elected simply because the public opposed "Oslo". When Sharon ran again, this time against Amram Mitzna, Sharon trounced him by an even larger landslide. But, like all those before him, Sharon then declared war on the Israeli voters who had elected him to stop Oslo, and he rededicated himself to carrying out large parts of the political agenda of the Israeli Left.
For twelve years, Israeli voters have been disenfranchised over and over and over again. But they were not cowed by the cynicism of the politicians, as the vote today on the referendum will show. Whenever they are given a chance, they show how thoroughly they reject the "Oslo" program of "land for sound-bytes".
The intellectual underpinnings for the "disengagement plan" are little more than an insult to the intelligence. Supposedly, the "disengagement" will allow the PLO to "prove itself" and its intentions, to impose its will and control over the Gaza Strip and begin "nation-building", with US and European support. But even if "testing" the PLO's intentions is still regarded as something positive, even if we pretend we do not know what those intentions are precisely, even if we think that allowing the PLO to impose its will over the Gaza Strip is something constructive, there is no reason whatsoever why such a "test" requires the expulsion of Jews who live in the Gaza Strip. The Jews live in two small areas within the Strip. Why can't the PLO impose its will on the rest of the Gaza Strip where Jews do not live and there prove its intentions? Why can't removal of settlements be withheld as a reward or bargaining chip for after the PLO is put to the test? Why can't advocates of removing settlements propose that this be done as a reward for the PLO after it has complied and shown its peaceful intentions?
In other words, even if one believes in the thinking behind the Sharon-Bush initiative for unilateral disengagement by Israel and the supposed forcing of the PLO to demonstrate its commitment to nation building, none of that logically requires immediate Israeli expulsion of Jewish settlers; especially when the expulsion would be long before the PLO complies with anything at all and after it has violated every single punctuation mark in every one of its past commitments.
And that logical fallacy is why Sharon is about to get creamed by his own party constituents. The Left will no doubt denounce Sharon for having planned to lose the referendum all along to avoid making concessions to the PLO, and wouldn't it be heavenly if they were correct. A much more realistic explanation is that Sharon's referendum was a strategic attempt to take the prosecutorial heat off himself and his family by appeasing the Israeli Left, which happens to control the Attorney General's office, the Israeli media and the courts.
A victory over the "disengagement plan" will be an enormous victory for Moshe Feiglin and his militant wing within the Likud (militant in the very best sense of the term). Feiglin is already being demonized by the Likud demagogic establishment, who are denouncing "those Feiglins" as fanatics endangering the party. Moshe was the initiator of the anti-Oslo Zo Artseinu movement in the 1990s. He was railroaded before a court under Netanyahu's reign and convicted of "sedition" because he and his people blocked a traffic intersection. After doing community service, Feiglin decided to take his fight to the innards of the Likud, challenging the Likud leadership from within. He and his camp won a respectable minority position within the party's central committee. While I have some quibbles with Feiglin over some of his choices of tactics and positions, he is the only truly consistent anti-Oslo activist-leader at this point inside the Likud, although may well represent the rank and file far better than Sharon and Ehud Olmert. Feiglin's people have led the battle against Sharon's proposal in the referendum, and the defeat of Sharon's plan will make Feiglin a much more significant player in the Israeli political scene.
May we be blessed with many many more of "those Feiglins".
In trying to stampede Likud voters into backing approval for his "plan", Sharon is moving from desperation into Orwellism. Last week, in Sharon's first major adventure into the netherworld of Orwellistic Newspeak, he declared that a defeat in the referendum for his proposal would be a "victory for Arafat". By inference, a defeat over Arafat would consist, I guess, of expelling Jewish settlers from their homes and handing over a Judenrein Gaza Strip to the PLO, in which it will organize rocket factories, training facilities and from which it will send out countless suicide bombers.
And someone forgot to tell the Palestinians that passage of the Sharon "Disengagement Plan" would be a defeat for Arafat. Palestinian Media Watch, a watchdog group that documents the contents of the PLO's controlled "Palestinian" media, issued a report that these media unanimously view a passage of the Sharon "plan" as an enormous victory for their "armed struggle" over the Jewish sub-humans and a tremendous achievement; a precedent for the dismantling of all of Israel (Haaretz, April 30).
More importantly, this is actually the very first test in Israel of direct democracy, and the very first time a ballot proposition has been brought before even a part of the electorate (only Likud voters are participating in the referendum, which makes it easier for the lemming politicians to dismiss it as a meaningless gesture). That fact may be even more significant than the actual results of the vote. This could open up incredible new possibilities, if it were to become the precedent for future ballot propositions, in which Israelis actually get to say what they want. Heaven knows where that could lead - maybe even to accountability of court judges!
The fact of the matter is that every single time, without exception, Israeli voters were offered an opportunity to vote for or against "Oslo", they voted against it. And every single time that they voted against "Oslo", the politicians then ignored the public will and carried out "Oslo" appeasements and capitulations anyway.
It all started when Israelis elected Yitzhak Rabin, who ran on a platform declaring unambiguously, "No Deals with the PLO," and then months later spat on the voters and struck the Oslo "deal." By 1996, Rabin had been assassinated by Yigal Amir, and Shimon Peres was beaten in the next vote handsomely by Binyamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu then ran for re-election and lost, but that was because voting for him was no longer voting against Oslo. Netanyahu as Prime Minister had out-Oslo-ed even Shimon Peres. In any case, Ehud Barak won largely thanks to the Arab voters supporting him at the polls.
When Ehud Barak later ran for re-election, he was defeated in a landslide by voters opposed to Oslo. Sharon was elected simply because the public opposed "Oslo". When Sharon ran again, this time against Amram Mitzna, Sharon trounced him by an even larger landslide. But, like all those before him, Sharon then declared war on the Israeli voters who had elected him to stop Oslo, and he rededicated himself to carrying out large parts of the political agenda of the Israeli Left.
For twelve years, Israeli voters have been disenfranchised over and over and over again. But they were not cowed by the cynicism of the politicians, as the vote today on the referendum will show. Whenever they are given a chance, they show how thoroughly they reject the "Oslo" program of "land for sound-bytes".
The intellectual underpinnings for the "disengagement plan" are little more than an insult to the intelligence. Supposedly, the "disengagement" will allow the PLO to "prove itself" and its intentions, to impose its will and control over the Gaza Strip and begin "nation-building", with US and European support. But even if "testing" the PLO's intentions is still regarded as something positive, even if we pretend we do not know what those intentions are precisely, even if we think that allowing the PLO to impose its will over the Gaza Strip is something constructive, there is no reason whatsoever why such a "test" requires the expulsion of Jews who live in the Gaza Strip. The Jews live in two small areas within the Strip. Why can't the PLO impose its will on the rest of the Gaza Strip where Jews do not live and there prove its intentions? Why can't removal of settlements be withheld as a reward or bargaining chip for after the PLO is put to the test? Why can't advocates of removing settlements propose that this be done as a reward for the PLO after it has complied and shown its peaceful intentions?
In other words, even if one believes in the thinking behind the Sharon-Bush initiative for unilateral disengagement by Israel and the supposed forcing of the PLO to demonstrate its commitment to nation building, none of that logically requires immediate Israeli expulsion of Jewish settlers; especially when the expulsion would be long before the PLO complies with anything at all and after it has violated every single punctuation mark in every one of its past commitments.
And that logical fallacy is why Sharon is about to get creamed by his own party constituents. The Left will no doubt denounce Sharon for having planned to lose the referendum all along to avoid making concessions to the PLO, and wouldn't it be heavenly if they were correct. A much more realistic explanation is that Sharon's referendum was a strategic attempt to take the prosecutorial heat off himself and his family by appeasing the Israeli Left, which happens to control the Attorney General's office, the Israeli media and the courts.
A victory over the "disengagement plan" will be an enormous victory for Moshe Feiglin and his militant wing within the Likud (militant in the very best sense of the term). Feiglin is already being demonized by the Likud demagogic establishment, who are denouncing "those Feiglins" as fanatics endangering the party. Moshe was the initiator of the anti-Oslo Zo Artseinu movement in the 1990s. He was railroaded before a court under Netanyahu's reign and convicted of "sedition" because he and his people blocked a traffic intersection. After doing community service, Feiglin decided to take his fight to the innards of the Likud, challenging the Likud leadership from within. He and his camp won a respectable minority position within the party's central committee. While I have some quibbles with Feiglin over some of his choices of tactics and positions, he is the only truly consistent anti-Oslo activist-leader at this point inside the Likud, although may well represent the rank and file far better than Sharon and Ehud Olmert. Feiglin's people have led the battle against Sharon's proposal in the referendum, and the defeat of Sharon's plan will make Feiglin a much more significant player in the Israeli political scene.
May we be blessed with many many more of "those Feiglins".