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| The captain has to go |
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| By Yoel Marcus |
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It's not an easy thing to say that the
prime
minister is at a crossroads, fast approaching his
last
stop. It's no lightheaded matter to say that
the prime minister,
wildly applauded at the
opening of the General Assembly of the
United
Jewish Communities of North America now in session
in
Jerusalem, has failed in his job of leading the
country.
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But these nice people from
the
GA will be going home in a
few days and the problem
will
remain in our laps - a prime
minister with no vision,
no
plan, no horizon; a prime
minister who has brought
the
country to where it is now
and stands at a
critical
juncture where he is doing
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more harm than good, no longer capable
or
worthy of manning the controls.
From this omelet,
we'll never get an egg.
At the end of Sharon's third year in
office,
Israel's standing - here and abroad - has taken
a turn
for the worse. At various symposia, the
question of whether its
establishment was a
mistake has become a popular topic. From
the
first intifada, waged with stones and
slingshots, we have
reached the point where
people are asking if Israel will still be
a
Jewish state 30 years from now. Surveys in
Europe show that
Israel is perceived as a
threat to world peace, the root of the
problem.
It's only a matter of time before it is saddled
with
all-out responsibility for global terror.
Sharon and his
oversized presence have blocked
out every last ray of light.
An interview with four former chiefs of the Shin
Bet
security service in Yedioth Ahronoth's
weekend magazine presented
a powerful
indictment against Sharon. The very fact that
this
damning article was printed in a newspaper
read by a large
proportion of
Arik-King-of-Israel fans goes to show that
the
ground is ripe for criticism.
Under the headline, "We
fear for Israel's
survival," Yaakov Peri says the state is
going
downhill and hurtling toward catastrophe in
every
possible sphere. To continue living by
the sword is to destroy
ourselves. Avraham
Shalom says it's time to admit once and for
all
that there is another side and we are treating
it
shamefully. Israel is courting disaster.
Carmi Gillon says the
country is going from bad
to worse, preoccupied more with
preventing the
next terror attack than finding a solution
to
the whole rotten mess. Ami Ayalon says the
problem is loss
of hope. The fact that neither
the Palestinians nor the Israelis
foresee a
better future is a consequence of what we are
doing
today, and that's the worst thing of
all.
Statements of
this kind are not new. They have
been appearing in Haaretz for
years, and now
they're cropping up more and more among
the
general public. The importance of this
interview is that
four heads of the security
services are talking to the people and
calling
a spade a spade.
Sharon did nothing to help Abu
Mazen with an
initiative that might have strengthened
him
vis-a-vis Arafat, thereby hastening his
downfall. What he
got instead was an
administration that won't wiggle an
eyebrow
without Arafat's permission.
The question now is
how will Sharon treat Abu
Ala. To shore him up, Sharon should be
making
gestures - not telling him what to do. He
should be
lifting blockades, easing
restrictions on the population,
freeing
prisoners and, most importantly, moving to
dismantle
illegal outposts as a prelude to
evacuating settlements.
Washington is warning
Israel that if Abu Ala loses his job
because of
us, all hell will break loose. On the other
hand,
Israel will be heavily pressured to carry
out its part in the
road map if Abu Ala does
manage to curb terror.
But
Sharon has no political plan. From the look
of things, he's
trying to insure that none of
those "painful concessions" rear
their head
while he's on duty. With his escapist
policies,
Sharon is like a radar-evading plane. The man
is a
serial shirker when it comes to keeping
his promises to bring
peace and security.
There are no signs that he intends to
change
this policy of marching in place, as if
somehow, time
will smooth out the wrinkles. But
looking at the
deteriorating
economic-social-defense situation, the
grim
national mood and Sharon's unwillingness to
present any
kind of platform or vision, time is
clearly working against us.
As Ayalon astutely observed: "When the captain
doesn't
know where he's heading, no wind in the
world will get him
there."
There is only one thing we can say to a
captain
like this who endangers his ship and his
passengers,
and it is not said lightly: Go
home. | |
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