The Sharon Gamble

...Nevertheless, when Likud Knesset members blocked his appointment of two ministers in November, Sharon decided he had no choice but to quit the party he founded...

...But if there is not another disengagement involving the evacuation of 50,00060,000 settlers living beyond the West Bank barrier, argued Ramon, there would surely be another intifada...

...In Israel, a brilliant military record is enough to cover such shortcomings, but Peretz had only served as an artilleryman and had to leave the Army early because of a noncombat injury...

...What he does have, though, are ambition and street smarts...

...By resigning from Likud, Sharon disemboweled Israel's Right wing, which had held sway for most of the years since Menachem Begin's ascent to the prime ministership in 1977...

...Sharon, who captured the Likud leadership in 1999, offered its adherents neither the ideological fixation of Begin's heir, Yitzchak Shamir, nor the crowdpleasing rhetoric of his successor, Benjamin Netanyahu...

...Within two weeks, before he had an organization in place, polls showed his new Kadima Party winning 37 seats in the next Knesset, while Likud plummeted from 40 seats at present to a projected nine to 12...

...As Peretz advanced in his public career, he progressively trimmed it back...

...A former Labor Party minister, Chaim Ramon, was the first to declare publicly that the Israeli political map needed reshaping...

...So this is a very long process...

...Reshaping Israel's Political Map The Sharon Gamble By Abraham Rabinovich Jerusalem In 1973, General Ariel Sharon led his division across the Suez Canal to break the Egyptian line and turn the Yom Kippur War around...

...Begin gave them what they were looking for...

...But his main thrust was social issues...

...Together Sharon and Peretz, within a few days, shattered the practically religious bond between the have-nots and the Likud that prevailed for almost 30 years...

...The Sephardim attributed their gray-collar status and their sense of being cannon fodder to the Ashkenazi elite of European origin dominating Labor...

...It would become apparent over the years that the attitude of many, if not most, Likud voters regarding territorial compromise with the Palestinians was more moderate than that of the ideologists determining party policy—and far more moderate than that of the Greater Israel extremists who regarded themselves as Likud allies...

...That, he said, meant more than just one term...

...He would serve as finance minister in a Peretz government, and might even do so in the more likely eventuality of Labor joining a coalition led by Kadima...

...Sharon announced as his primary goal "laying the foundation for a peace agreement in which the final boundaries of the country would be determined...

...They were deposited in Sderot, a small town in the semiarid Negev not far from the Gaza Strip, where Peretz still lives...

...Cardiologists described the second procedure as "routine...

...At the urging of panicked advisers, fearful of scaring away centrist voters, he duly issued statements supporting Israeli rule in East Jerusalem and opposing the return of Palestinian refugees to Israel...

...The existing structure has reached the end of the road," he said in an interview with the Tel Aviv daily Haaretz early in 2005...

...He had been a good small town mayor, a controversial union leader and a Knesset member of no particular distinction...

...Sharon's initial "mild" stroke and the need to repair a small hole in his heart naturally raised concerns about his ability to see his plans through...

...Seventy-seven is a good age," he said jauntily when asked about embarking on a new political adventure at his stage in life...

...Everyone still recalls the 1965 attempt by David Ben-Gurion, Israel's founding father, after he took angry leave of Labor (or Mapai, as it was then known...

...Suffice it to say that his deliberate trademark was his mustache—long an extravagant affair approaching the dimensions of Jerry Colonna's or Salvador Dali's...

...One of Israel's most creative political thinkers, Ramon has in the past made far-reaching proposals that were initially dismissed as impractical and implemented shortly afterward...

...ALMOST as astonishing as the overnight shrinking of Likud was the resuscitation of the moribund Labor Party under Amir Perete, hitherto a quasi-clownish periphery figure...

...In 2002, he was the first public figure to propose a unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, and later was the first to propose building a barrier separating Israel from West Bank suicide bombers...

...This in itself represents a social upheaval of no small dimensions...

...Not bad for a 77-year-old man who had been written off as a public figure in 1982, after being found indirectly responsible as defense minister for the Beirut massacre by Lebanese Christian allies...

...Aides noted that close relatives of Sharon had lived into their 90s...

...That won him the adulation of Likud voters, while his prominent role in building up settlements made him an icon for the ideologues...

...In November, he broke the hegemony of Israel's Rightists by abandoning the Likud, taking with him most of the party faithful...

...Born in Morocco, he immigrated with his family to Israel at the age of four...

...It could be that we will never achieve it...

...A lot of experience...

...In September 2005, as prime minister, he broke the territorial status quo visà-vis the Palestinians after 38 years by unilaterally pulling Israel out of the Gaza Strip...

...The settlers and the extreme Right, standing on the shoulders of the Likud electorate, had imposed their will on successive governments...

...Only 16 per cent said they would remain faithful to Likud...

...The relief Sharon felt once he made his decision was apparent in the press conferences he held afterward...

...If these conditions were not met, Sharon presumably hoped to set "temporary" borders by evacuating outlying settlements and withdrawing behind the barrier for as long as it would take to come to an agreement...

...Ramon, who discussed the subject with Sharon several times, made clear in Ha'aretz his own view of the policy a centrist party should adopt...

...He was circumspect, however, about the chances of achieving true peace...

...The "Big Bang" and "Small Bang" were among the options Sharon weighed in the wake of the Gaza pullout...

...He became involved in local politics and was elected mayor, a job he filled with sufficient distinction to win a place on Labor's Knesset list in 1988.Hedemonstrated that his ambitions went beyond being a backbencher by forming his own party, One Nation, which won two seats in subsequent elections...

...The figures were not expected to change much prior to the March 28 balloting...

...The Sephardi newcomers wanted a strong leader who both demonstrated empathy for the downtrodden and made a mockery of Labor...

...When he began his bid for the party leadership this fall, he trimmed it to near normal size and even had his wild head of curly hair cropped...

...Acknowledging his inexperience in the areas of defense, foreign affairs and economics, Peretz said he would bring in experts to work with him...

...Polls found that the party lost as much as three-quarters of its supporters in the wake of Sharon's gambit...

...Abraham Rabinovich writes frequently for the New Leader on the Middle East...

...In doing so they reshaped the Israeli political map—and probably not just for the coming elections...

...You've seen a lot...

...Even his jarring medical problems didn't weaken his popularity...

...Although he had said "there are no plans" for further unilateral disengagements on the West Bank, veteran Israeli political observers were convinced they already existed in the contingency drawers...

...Likud's leaders were also largely Ashkenazi, but they were the opposition, not the establishment...

...Ramon foresaw a "Big Bang" in which Sharon would abandon Likud and form a centrist party that would be joined by Labor and Shinui, a formation dedicated to opposing religious coercion...

...New centrist parties have traditionally had a short shelf life in Israel, and the established politicians who left their own parties to form a new one have fared worse...

...Mustering the votes of his union supporters, he defeated the venerable Shimon Peres and lesser contenders in party primaries...

...His Rafi Party won only seven seats in the 120-seat Knesset...

...It was the first time a Sephardi won the leadership of a major party...

...Granted, he was himself an archetypical Ashkenazi, with the mannerisms of a Polish gentleman, but his populist oratory appealed strongly to voters from the urban slums and the outlying development towns...

...He seemed more at ease than most Israelis could remember since he was a brash young general...

...The head of BenGurion University, Braverman is a former senior World Bank official...

...Polls showed him with twice as much support as his nearest rival in the scheduled upcoming elections...

...Israel can continue to live without a formal Palestinian peace, he said, but not with the occupation of Palestinian territories...

...Each of the major parties, he said, was internally divided on the crucial political and social issues and a realignment was required to give the voters distinct choices...

...He thus severed with one swift blow what had given Likud its power: the coupling of nationalist-religious ideologues and totally unrelated ethnic Sephardi have-nots...

...He also envisioned the possibility of a "Small Bang" that had Sharon going it alone...

...Those issues—Jerusalem, Palestinian refugees, final borders—could remain unsolved for a long time...

...Otherwise, Likud's dominant Right wing would make his life hell if he tried to execute his far-reaching plans for his anticipated third term—plans he only hinted at...

...Likud was swept into power, however, by masses of immigrants from Arab countries and their children fleeing the Labor Party...

...How could someone who had never even been a minister, who hardly ever spoke out on security or foreign policy matters, and whose education did not extend beyond high school, be so presumptuous...

...Perete' campaign for the Labor Party leadership, a post that carries the prospect of becoming prime minister, astonished many...

...He was reluctant to make either move...

...Upon returning to work after only 40 hours ofhospitalization to treatthe stroke, however, he showed no signs of diminished vigor...

...The public had hardly recovered from his surprise victory when Peretz revealed himself as a flaming dove, announcing that he favored the Oslo accords—discredited in the eyes of most Israelis by the Palestinian intifada...

...It should therefore withdraw—unilaterally if necessary—from the West Bank, except for the major settlement blocs and the Jordan Valley...

...But he was without doubt a strong personality...

...His latest book, The Yom Kippur War, has just been issued in paperback...

...Occupation must be ended even if we haven't solved all the other issues," he said...

...Polls show that notwithstanding the broad appeal of the party Sharon created, Labor under Peretz will increase its strength by several Knesset seats as fellow Sephardim, and many Ashkenazim who see in him a man who truly cares about the plight of the poor, rally to his flag...

...He declared his support of a $1,000a-month minimum wage and vowed to narrow the widening gap between rich and poor...

...Israel would seek to arrive at a peace agreement under the socalled "road map" drawn up by the international community...

...He appeared to be hinting at a vision similar to Ramon's...

...The problem is that the Arab world, not just the Palestinians, does not accept the right of the Jewish people to have an independent Jewish state in the land where the Jewish people were born...

...He also came out for peace talks with Syria and the appointment of an Arab minister...

...More than 60 per cent of those asked who voted for Likud in the last election said they would vote for Kadima, despite Sharon's declared intention of making further territorial concessions...

...The party's hard core had always consisted of those whose vision of Greater Israel encompassed a Jewish state extending from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, including all of the West Bank...

...It is a collection of anachronistic parties held together for historical reasons andnot relevant to either the present or future...

...I intend to continue in my task as long as I am able to and as long as there is need...

...His choice of Avishai Braverman as one of his first recruits won universal applause...

...Only then, from Israel's perspective, would the two sides sit down and negotiate an agreement on all outstanding issues, including final borders...

...Then it could hunker down behind the security barrier being built parallel to the pre-Six Day War border...

...As for the hard-line parties to Likud's right, with a projected 16 seats among them, they suddenly looked like floundering fish beached by a fast-receding tide...

...Apart from the mustache and his combative style during his years as head of the Histadrut Labor Federation, the most notable thing about the 52-year-old Peretz is his origins...

...The moderates within Likud, though, did not make an issue of this difference and continued to bask in the clubhouse warmth that came with party allegiance...

...I see the occupation as an immoral act," he declared...

...But this route would oblige the Palestinian Authority to disarm all militant groups, including Hamas, and end incitement against Israel in the Palestinian media and school system...

...But we will not despair...