In office, Sharon has acted contrary to everything he said he believed. Not for a moment did Sharon seek to inspire his people with a new confidence. Confronting a defiant Arafat and ever greater terror, Sharon's response has been indistinguishable from Labor--open and closing of roads to Arabs, killing an occasional terrorist, unilateral ceasefires, proclamations of restraint, ever more restraint, and new concessions. Although he had described the courageous Jews of Hebron as the cornerstone of the Zionist enterprise, as their homes were daily firebombed and members of the community--including an infant in its carriage--picked off by Arab sharpshooters, Sharon refused even to seize the surrounding hills from which the Arab shooters and firebombers worked their mayhem.

In office, Sharon has acted contrary to everything he said he believed.

What happened? Incredibly, Sharon turned over the government to Shimon Peres, the very man he had rightly accused of bringing Israel to the brink of annihilation. Sharon brought Labor into his governing coalition, giving that party the same number of cabinet seats as his own Likud Party. Worse, he gave Labor the two key posts of Foreign and Defense Minister. Presumably Sharon did not intend the result he achieved. In bringing Labor into the government, Sharon may well have believed that he would unify the dangerously fractured body politic and, at the same time, given his enormous electoral victory, be in a position to exercise control over the repudiated opposition. Sharon doubtless had an additional consideration. Benjamin Netanyahu had boxed himself out of the Prime Minister's office by refusing to run unless there was a general election, not just one for Prime Minister, on the grounds the splintered Knesset made the country ungovernable. But he remained on the sidelines, biding his time, predicting Sharon would last in office no more than a few months. As long as Sharon had Labor's votes in the Knesset, he need have no fear of Netanyahu.

As matters turned out, Peres easily outmaneuvered Sharon. All important military and diplomatic decisions were soon made by a "mini-cabinet" comprising Sharon, Foreign Minister Peres and Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, i.e. two Laborites against Sharon. On June 20, the situation became even worse as it was officially decided that all military operations (including any actions by the army in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza) would require unanimous approval by the mini-cabinet. In other words, it would no longer be enough for Sharon to win over Ben-Eliezer inorder to take any kind of action. Any action would have to be endorsed by the stone-hearted Peres, who for Oslo's eight years has witnessed no Arab atrocity that shook his impenetrable indifference or interfered with his glassy insistence that the New Middle East was around the corner. In giving Peres veto power, Sharon has handed him the government keys. Moreover, while Prime Minister in-Name-Only Sharon was immobilized, Prime Minister in-Reality Peres felt free to act as he pleased. Sharon erupted in rage when he discovered that European Union observers had been situated in the territories; it turned out Peres had coordinated their placement with the EU without telling Sharon.

With Peres authentically at the helm, the Israeli government accepted the Mitchell Report and yet another phony ceasefire in the wake of the murder of 21 young Israelis at a Tel Aviv club. This time Arafat did not even bother to sign the agreement drawn up by CIA chief George Tenet and announced publicly he would abide by almost none of its provisions. Accepting the Mitchell Report was even worse. Peres displayed his customary talent for calling black "white" by describing the Report as a "fantastic achievement" for Israel. In accepting it, the Israeli government was undertaking to freeze all settlement activity, including homes within existing communities. Here was a reward indeed for Arafat for nine months of unremitting violence, precisely what Sharon had been most emphatic he would not countenance.

The Sharon government begins to sound like a crazy broken record. On June 20, announcing that Israel will purchase 50 U.S. fighter jets, Defense Minister Ben Eliezer issued a statement saying the jets would give the government "the chance to take far-reaching risks for peace." Risks for peace? A recent Israeli cartoon shows a customer in a bookstore asking a clerk if they had any books on the peace process. The clerk tells him to look in the fantasy section.

Sharon surely knows what needs to be done. In an interview with radio station Arutz 7 on June 21, recently retired Brigadier General Effie Eitam summed it up: the top PA brass must be made to disappear, all the weapons must be taken from within the Palestinian Authority and its territorial contiguity must be broken up. Rather than do any of this, Sharon remains a deer in the headlights frozen in fear. Fear of Peres. Fear of the demented Israeli Left. Fear of the U.S. administration. Fear of the EU. Fear of the UN. Fear of the BBC. But immobility is immensely costly. Far from shoring up Israel's position in world opinion, it merely encourages both the U.S. and the Europeans to make more demands to push the "peace process" forward. Yes, there would be an immediate outcry if Israel "terminated" Arafat and his PA. But in the longer run, the only way Israel can improve its position is by changing the basic facts on the ground.

With Peres as its functional Prime Minister, Israel's situation can only deteriorate further as the government collapses in the face of each new challenge. In the brilliant English TV comedy series Yes, Prime Min-

[(Continued on p.5)]

Outpost               - 4 -               June-July 2001