During the 2003 election campaign, then Labor Party leader Amram Mitzna made unilateral disengagement from Gaza a central plank of his policy platform. Prime Minister Sharon, on the other hand, came out forcefully against the idea, and won twice as many votes as Labor did. The voters of the country not only gave the Likud the largest margin of victory ever in an Israeli election, they also voted in what became the most stable government in Israeli history – at least on paper.
Sharon managed to bring the militantly secular Shinui party to sit in the same government with the National Religious Party, he got them to hammer out an agreement on their policy differences between them, and then added the National Union party to his cabinet. The balance that existed in the coalition was something nearly unheard of in recent memory.
Sharon used the opportunity to install a powerful finance minister who proceeded to enact serious structural reforms in the economy and almost immediately succeeded in bringing Israel out of its worst recession ever. Sharon also succeeded in divesting himself of a major drag on his security doctrine by creating a government without heavy left-wing influence.
Sharon succeeded in becoming the first prime minister in 15 years to be re-elected to office, and looked as though he would also succeed in maintaining a stable government with productive policies for the length of its term for the first time in a decade. But the Disengagement Plan has destroyed all that.
As a result of reviving the plan that the voters already soundly rejected in the last elections, Sharon has himself eliminated all forms of stability in his government. The National Union was kicked out of the cabinet for the first vote on the plan, and the National Religious Party has basically been torn in two, with its leader and its senior personality leaving the coalition while the other four members of Knesset try to determine how they can be effective representatives of their public.
Now the issue at hand is whether to bring the Disengagement issue to the public for a vote, and if so, in what form. Most of the Israeli Right is in favor of a general referendum on the issue. This bears within it the inherent danger of the issue passing a referendum. But it is also an admission that the Right currently has no alternative to Sharon as Prime Minister.
The left, meanwhile, is championing new elections. They assume, and I believe they are correct, that new elections will result in a stronger showing for the left and center. They are also aware that election results can be manipulated far more easily than a simple yes-no referendum. There is no doubt that Sharon would win such an election, with support from the right. But a Sharon victory would then be interpreted as a mandate for the disengagement, and an unlikely victory by Sharon's Labor opponent would be interpreted as an even clearer mandate.
The major problem faced by the opponents of Disengagement is that they lack a strong public relations campaign. There is little effort at convincing undecided voters of the problems of the plan. Neither Sharon nor his prime backer, Ehud Olmert, have said a word about why this plan is beneficial for Israel in terms of security. In fact, they have done just the opposite by sending the IDF into Gaza for weeks at a time to defend against Kassam rockets and other missiles being fired from there. They have not answered how Israel will be safer without our presence in those areas. And they have not answered why on earth it would be beneficial for Israel to remove Jews from their homes in Israel.
But the right wing has not done much explaining of these points to the public. They haven't explained why it would be bad for Israel to remove Jews from their homes or why the IDF presence in Gaza is so essential. And sadly, Israel's general population needs to be explained these things.
Perhaps therefore it is a good idea to bring the Disengagement Plan to a referendum, despite the fact that it has already been defeated in an election. That would give the Prime Minister a glorious opportunity to explain why he has sacrificed government stability, Jewish security, and Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel in the name of wholesale surrender to terrorists who continue to kill Israelis. It would give him the opportunity to explain to Israelis why, 30 years after he almost single-handedly wiped out the Egyptian Third Army, he is now prepared to entrust Israeli security in the Negev to the Egyptians.
And it would give the Israeli Right the opportunity to explain that this is indeed the case, and that if Israel is to remain a Jewish State, it is incumbent upon every citizen of that state to support Jewish settlement throughout that state, including in Gaza, and to vigorously defend against all those who would challenge that right.
Copyright 2004. All rights reserved. Yehuda Poch is a journalist living in Israel. Reproduction in electronic or print format by permission of the author only.
