Knesset Speaker Ruby Rivlin added another barb at Sharon during this morning's special Knesset session in memory of the seventh President of Israel, Ezer Weizman. Weizman died almost two months ago, on the Passover holiday. Knesset Speaker Ruby Rivlin praised Weizman for, among other things, understanding that when his political views changed, he should quit his political party.
In view of Rivlin's long-standing criticism of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, his implication that Sharon should similarly quit his party was clear.
"When Weizman saw that his outlook differed significantly from that of [Likud leader] Menachem Begin," Rivlin said, "he did not hesitate to quit the Likud. He started a new party, Yachad, which he then presented to the public as a political alternative."
Two months ago, Knesset Speaker Rivlin, a personal friend of the Prime Minister, spoke at a Likud gathering and went so far as to say that Sharon should be removed from the Likud. "The Likud is my home," Rivlin said, "and those who have arrived as guests in my home will not tell me to leave. I say to them: Please, take leave yourselves."
Last October, upon reading the original version of Sharon's Disengagement Plan, Rivlin wrote to the 3,000 Likud Central Committee members, "The Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, and those senior Likud figures supporting disengagement are not loyal to the Land of Israel, nor to the principles of the Likud... In the name of what ideology will we [the Likud] again ask for the people's trust?"