Rooting for Bibi Is Rooting for Israel - New York Times

Rooting for Bibi Is Rooting for Israel - New York TimesSeptember 23, 2005
Rooting for Bibi Is Rooting for Israel
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Next Monday, Israel and the whole Middle East will witness a hugely important election. Ostensibly it is a vote over when the Likud Party should hold its primary. But it actually is a vote over who will lead Likud into the next election - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon or his challenger, Bibi Netanyahu. If I could vote, there is no question whom I would cast my ballot for: Bibi. Yes, pray for Bibi to crush Mr. Sharon and drive him right out of the party. That's where Mr. Sharon belongs.

Why, you ask? Because the Likud under Bibi, and without Ariel Sharon, will be free to be itself - to represent the lunatic right in Israel, become a fringe party and drive over a cliff. Mr. Sharon will then also be free to be himself, to form a new party with other center-right and center-left figures, a party that can give Israel a solid majority for making a final settlement with the Palestinians - provided they ever get their act together and turn Gaza, their ministate, into something more like Dubai and less like Mogadishu.

"Sharon will only peel off from the Likud and start his own center party after he is persuaded that he has lost control of the Likud," said David Makovsky of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the author of a recent study on the Gaza disengagement. "A Likud split would likely realign Israeli political parties so they more closely mirror the real views of the Israeli public. Right now, two-thirds of Israelis support a two-state solution with the Palestinians. A portion of this two-thirds was in the Likud and represented by Sharon. I would call them the 'hard-bargainers.' But many of the one-third who oppose any deal were also in the Likud. Call them the 'hard-liners.' Many of them view Bibi as their standard-bearer."

A new coalition made up of Mr. Sharon's followers from Likud, as well as the moderate Labor and Shinui Parties, "could revitalize the Israeli center, which was decimated by the terror and violence between 2000 and 2004, by bringing together under one political tent that two-thirds who want a deal with the Palestinians based on secure borders," Mr. Makovsky said. "This could be a winning ticket, so long as Hamas does not return to rocket and suicide attacks that, if past is prologue, would only bolster Bibi."

The whole debate about disengagement from Gaza exposed the real political trends in Israel today, precisely because having 8,000 Jews living in one-third of the Gaza Strip, surrounded by over 1.3 million Palestinians, had become utterly insane - disconnected from any strategic, moral, demographic, nationalist or religious logic. Therefore, those who supported continuing the status quo in Gaza indefinitely, which included the whole hard-line wing of Likud, really identified themselves as Jewish extremists and messianists who are a danger to the future of Israel and the Jewish people.

As the Haaretz newspaper essayist Ari Shavit put it, "Following the disengagement, it is now clear that these are two different states: Israel on one hand, and the Likud state on the other. Israel wants sovereignty, a border and a clear national identity; the Likud state wants settlements, a mixed population and a blurred identity. Israel wants democracy, rationality and enlightenment; the Likud state wants corruption, slaps on the back and emotional storms. ... In the past, the Likud state could be credited with representing the people. But no longer. ...

"Therefore, the time has come to choose: Israel or the Likud state. The Israeli republic or the republic of the Likud Central Committee. ... Without dividing the Likud, it will be impossible to divide the land. Without setting a border for the Likud, it will be impossible to set a border for Israel."

There is something about the international climate today - the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the pressures of globalization, rising middle classes who want stability and the passing of a generation of charismatic leaders - that is blowing apart many of the stale political arrangements that have long governed Arab-Israeli politics. Syria has been forced out of Lebanon. Israel has unilaterally pulled out of Gaza. Egypt has held its first quasi-multiparty election. The Palestinian Authority has imploded with the death of Yasir Arafat, and the Baathists have been blown up by the Bushes.

The laws of gravity are finally forcing some reality politics on the Middle East, except in those countries with oil.

If Israel is the harbinger, maybe the moderate majorities will finally get together out of necessity and start burying the past, rather than continuing to let themselves be manipulated by fanatic minorities who want to bury the future.