In my opinion, there is a fourth explanation that is far more appropriate, namely that the Likud is now and always has been simply the Other Labor Party. The Likud has never been a true political party with its own vision and agenda. Until 1978, the Likud -- and its previous reincarnations Herut, the Liberal Party, and Gahal -- was nothing more than a debating society on the back benches of the Knesset, rhetorically challenging the leaders of Israel's One-Party Mapai-controlled state. Only after the debacle of the Yom Kippur War did the Likud find itself astonished and unprepared to wake up one morning as the governing party. An analysis of the party platforms of the Likud before its gaining power and after holding power is instructive. From the party of Zionist militancy and free markets while in the permafrost of opposition, the Likud morphed overnight into the Me-Too-Labor-Party. It spent the next few years implementing the same policies that had been advocated by the Labor Party. The "free market" rhetoric of the early Likud was manifested in dirigiste state control and planning, the suppression of competition and markets, and the wholesale printing of money, which characterized the Begin reign.

Netanyahu converted Oslo from a failed program of clueless leftists into an unchallengeable national consensus.

The Shamir governments were often in fact national unity governments, ruling together with the Labor Party. They were also characterized not only by even worse socialist kibitzing in the economy than under Labor, but also by growing manifestations of Likud cowardice and appeasement. The Shamir government released 1100 terrorist murderers in the infamous "Jibril Deal," setting the precedent for Sharon's capitulation recently to Hezbollah. When the violence of the first "Intifada" broke out, the government responded with cowardice and "restraint." Had 50 rioters been eliminated in its first days, many thousands of people would still be alive today and Israel would not be tottering on the brink of self-destruction. And when Shamir's Labor Party coalition partners began illegal "negotiations" with the PLO behind Shamir's back, he responded by turning his other cheek -- and ours as well.

Netanyahu was even more desperate to be the Other Shimon Peres. Elected by the Israeli voter for the sole purpose of ending Oslo, Netanyahu quickly morphed into the Wye's Man of Chelm, turning Hebron over to the barbarians, and converting Oslo from a failed program of clueless leftists into an unchallengeable national consensus.

Sharon took over as a result of Netanyahu shooting himself in his electoral foot by falling into the trap Ehud Barak laid for him. (Netanyahu vowed to run only if there were elections for both the Knesset and Prime Minister and, when Barak called for elections only for Prime Minister, was forced out of the running.) But by this time, Sharon was no longer the Sharon of 1973, the dashing, courageous hero of the Suez Canal. He was the overweight, aging Sharon, slow of mind, cowardly of ways. No sooner did he trounce the Labor Party's Amram Mitzna than he began mumbling about the "painful sacrifices" Israel would have to soon make to the PLO's mini-fuhrer.

With buses exploding, Sharon at first resisted the calls to build a security wall. Then under pressure to do something, even if only a symbolic act, he acquiesced. But the security wall cannot provide security. What exactly does Sharon think the PLO will be doing behind any security wall he builds? Taking up quilting? Sharon does not have the stomach to do what really needs to be done to stamp out PLO terrorism, and that is to re-establish the tightest military control over Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip, open-ended and with no timetable to remove it, together with expulsion or execution of the PLO "leadership," combined with a wide-ranging program of de-Nazification.

Of course such a program would anger the Americans, but it is becoming increasingly obvious that, unless Israel is prepared, when necessary, to defy the Americans, it will not survive. What ever happened to "Just Say No"? Israel should normally go out of its way to cooperate with and assist the United States, but there are certain existential matters where Israel simply has to say "No." Appeasing the PLO any further is one such area.

Sharon's new Gaza Plan is no better than the juvenile self-indulgences and Spanky-and-Alfalfa "Peace Plans" of Yossi Beilin. What does Sharon think the PLO will do in Gaza after Sharon expels all the Jewish settlers and delivers to Arafat a Judenrein Gaza Strip, this as the "first stage" in the Sharon Doctrine? Will the PLO engage in peaceful nation-building and economic development? Or will it rain rockets and mortars down on the nearby Jewish towns inside the pre-1967 "Green Line," sending out suicide bombers in boats and ladders, who dig under the "Wall," run around it, and shoot over it?

The PLO has been allowed to import unlimited tons of explosives from Egypt through the Rafiah tunnels Egypt operates, even when Israel's army was supposed to be on the ground and in control in Gaza! (And have you noticed that the same Powell, who wants to deduct from U.S. aid to Israel any money Israel expends on its security fence, has never suggested that Egypt be penalized for these tunnels and munitions?) So what will happen once the settlers are driven out? In the last Israeli elections, Labor's Amram Mitzna ran for prime minister on a platform of unilateral Israeli withdrawals from the "occupied territories" with no quid pro quo from the PLO in any form. Mitzna was beaten by Sharon in the largest election landslide in Israeli history. Or was he?

Outpost               - 4 -               March 2004