A HAWK, THEN A DOVE
by George Jonas
National Post
January 6, 2006

Short of a miracle nothing can save Ariel Sharon's political life.
Having suffered the second stroke within three weeks, Israel's 77-year-old
prime minister is unlikely to recuperate sufficiently to remain a player in
the high-stakes game of Mideast politics. At this writing, even his
physical survival is in doubt.

Miracles do happen, though, and nowhere more frequently than in the
Holy Land. Israel is a region of burning bushes and divided seas, and
Sharon is nothing short of a miracle-magnet himself. One shouldn't write
off to a mere cerebral hemorrhage a dogged old warrior who bulldozed his
way back, not just from caucus Coventry or public-opinion Siberia, but from
the seventh circle of moral and political hell.

Sharon's low point followed the disastrous Lebanese incursion of 1982,
after which an Israeli commission found the then-defense minister
indirectly responsible for the massacre of civilians in the refugee camps
of Sabra and Shatila. People have come back from strokes more easily than
from such debacles. Yet while Sharon's comebacks and make-overs have been
legendary, and his veteran soldier's fortune may rescue him one more time,
the racing form says that he has reached the end of his road.

The odds are against Sharon being able to lead his new splinter party,
Kadima, in the upcoming elections. Since Kadima has been a one-man-show,
without Sharon it has no viability. The party that with Sharon at the helm
would almost certainly have come to power in Israel, without him will
almost certainly finish third behind Labour's dovish left, led by Amir
Peretz, and Likud's hawkish right, led by Benjamin Netanyahu.

Who, then, will inherit the mantle, the new-kid-on-the-block Peretz or the
tried-and-true former prime minister, "Bibi" Netanyahu? The racing form
favours Bibi. Analysts, including the eminent Daniel Pipes, point out that
Kadima's members came overwhelmingly from Likud's ranks and should be
expected to return to their natural home after Sharon's exit. "The sudden
leftward turn of Israeli politics in the wake of Sharon's personal turn to
the left will stop," Prof. Pipes wrote recently, "and perhaps even be
reversed."

I'm not so sure. Though the racing form is usually right, no day passes
without an outsider crossing the finish line ahead of the favorites
somewhere. Peretz may turn out to be one such pony. Sharon's departure
could favour Labour ­ especially if he departs not only politics but life.
Those Israelis who followed Sharon from Likud to Kadima may want to give
his legacy a chance, which it would only have with Peretz at the helm.
Definitely not with Netanyahu.

It seems to me that Sharon's jag to the left, surprising as it may have
appeared, followed a pattern. The warrior-turned-peacemaker is an archetype
in fable as well as in life. In Westerns it often appears as the
gunslinger-turned-preacher. Though far from being unique to Israel, it
happened to pop up twice on the bridge of the Jewish ship of state in
recent history.

Sharon's predecessors, Ehud Barak and Yitzak Rabin, both progressed from
war-hero generals to devout peacemakers. In the opinion of some, they
metamorphosed into dupes and appeasers. Though most ex-warriors are viewed
as benign in their new roles as peaceniks, the transformation CAN cross the
line into treachery. Field Marshall Henri Phillipe Petain, heroic defender
of France in World War I, was convicted traitor and Nazi collaborator in
World War II. (Needless to say, neither Barak nor Rabin was a Petain,
though the religeous zealot who assassinated Rabin may have thought so.)

There are psychological reasons, as well as practical ones, that combine to
make ex-soldiers potentially more pacific than civilians. In any event,
Sharon's assessment that Israel's security was better served by strategic
withdrawal and entrenchment than by the military incursions, occupations,
and settlement-buildings he previously favoured, appeared to have struck a
chord with many Israelis. Before Sharon fell ill, Kadima would have won 42
seats in Israel's 120-seat Knesset, as opposed to Labour's 19 and Likud's
14.

The key is that Sharon's policies worked, at least in the short run.
Withdrawing Israel into an area of defensible perimeters, then physically
putting a fence around it, has cut terrorism by 90%. The difference is
enormous between a suicide bomber a day and perhaps one or two a month.

It's ironic that Sharon the hawk may die a dove, with his legacy benefiting
Labour rather than Likud. But then, life is full of ironies ­ and not only
in the Middle East.

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