by David Landau
The PLO now saw its opportunity. At a session of the Palestine National Council, the PLO’s parliament, in Algiers the following November, Arafat proclaimed an independent Palestinian state “with holy Jerusalem as its capital” and hinted at recognition of Israel. After further verbal to-and-fro, he produced a statement, in the dying days of the Reagan administration, that explicitly fulfilled long-standing U.S. conditions for dialogue with the PLO: acceptance of Israel’s right to exist; acceptance of negotiations under UN Security Council Resolution 242; and a permanent commitment to desist from terror.
Shultz hardly rejoiced at this development (unlike others in Washington, who saw it as a breakthrough). But he bit the bullet and instructed the U.S. ambassador to Tunisia to begin official talks between the United States and the PLO. Shamir, horrified, could only reiterate lamely that Israel would never have truck with the organization. But his protestations rang increasingly hollow. In a sop to the new Bush administration in Washington, Shamir submitted a new plan for elections in the Palestinian territories that he had jointly formulated with Minister of Defense Yitzhak Rabin. Israel would then negotiate with the elected, indigenous Palestinian leadership over an interim self-government regime.
For Sharon, too, this chain of events presented an opportunity—to deprecate all the policy makers. He railed at Shultz. “I can’t believe that the U.S. would bring the PLO into the process. If that happened, it would only show how little one can rely on signed American commitments.”5 As for Labor, it was “koshering the rat.” Labor, he asserted, was prepared “to negotiate over our future with the greatest Jew murderers of our time, whose whole raison d’être is the destruction of the State of Israel … I never believed a day would come when I would have to level such a serious accusation against Peres, the man I knew in the 1950s … and against Rabin, under whose command I fought in the Six-Day War.”
He demanded that Israel immediately annex those parts of the West Bank, sparsely populated, that Yigal Allon, the Labor minister, had approved for Jewish settlement back in the 1960s and 1970s. The Allon Plan was hardly his dream, he wrote. “But, given the current sense of erosion in our national will and purpose, I embrace it now.” Sharon presented his new ideas to the cabinet in a long lecture, aided as always by large colored maps, this time purportedly representing the Allon Plan.
It sounded good, but it was shot through with disingenuousness. Israel had committed at Camp David not to annex any of the occupied territories but to negotiate a Palestinian autonomy for them. Sharon’s “enhanced Allon Plan,” moreover, proposed to annex all the settlements that had been built since 1977, with all the Palestinian population in the areas surrounding them. This was no enhancement of Allon but a perversion of it.
WAR OF WORDS
President George H. W. Bush and his secretary of state, James Baker, were hardly bowled over by the Shamir-Rabin proposal for Palestinian elections. But they decided to give it a chance, despite what they immediately discerned was the Israeli leader’s distinct lack of enthusiasm over the plan that bore his own name.
Confirming the Americans’ suspicions, hampering their efforts from day one, and seriously souring relations between the two governments was the old irritant of settlement building. Bush quickly concluded that Shamir “was not being straight with him in this regard,” Baker writes in his memoirs. “At first, Shamir had suggested that this was strictly an internal matter and not the business of the United States. ‘You have things that concern you, we have things that concern us,’ he said. ‘Don’t let it concern you.’ Given the fact that at the time American taxpayer–financed assistance to Israel amounted to more than $1,000 per Israeli citizen per year, this was not a brush-off George Bush was prepared to accept.”6
For Sharon, it was “1938 all over again.” No less. “They want to do to us what they did to Czechoslovakia in 1938: they sacrificed her in order to prevent war.” The proposed elections would lead inexorably, he warned, to the creation of “a second Palestinian state, after Jordan, which in essence is the Palestinian state.”
Baker presented an easy target for Sharon and the group of rebel ministers that was beginning to form around him, by publicly giving vent to his frustrations in refreshingly plain English. He chose the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, the powerful pro-Israel lobbying organization, to declare in May 1989, “For Israel, now is the time to lay aside once and for all the unrealistic vision of a Greater Israel … Israel should forswear annexation … stop settlement activity … reach out to the Palestinians as neighbors who deserve political rights.”
In Tel Aviv, Sharon had a field day. The cause and blame for this “slap in the face,” he wrote in the newspaper Hadashot, was the government’s so-called peace plan and the pusillanimity it betrayed. Israel’s failure to suppress the intifada had led to the Reagan-Shultz decision to talk to the PLO. And the same weakness had now produced Baker’s “unprecedentedly blunt and harsh public statement … America’s attitude to us will be determined above all by the question whether we are weak or strong.”
Sharon organized a series of meetings at his home in East Jerusalem for Likud Party activists and elected officials who felt, or could be persuaded to feel, as he did about the Shamir-Rabin plan. The venue, he explained, was intended to dramatize his conviction that if the plan were implemented, it would lead to the repartition of Jerusalem. His strategy was to try to get the plan rejected by the Likud central committee, which was due to convene in July.
By July 1989, Sharon’s hard-line ginger group had gelled. Its members were himself, David Levy, and Yitzhak Modai. They drew up a list of six “constraints,” or, literally, hoops, as around a barrel: no negotiation with the PLO; no Palestinian state; no limitation of settlement building; no foreign sovereignty west of the river Jordan; no votes for East Jerusalem Palestinians; the intifada must be brought to an end before any negotiation with any Palestinians.
The sting was in the tail. The first five points were motherhood and apple pie for Shamir, too. But the prime minister, under sustained American pressure, had signaled that he was prepared to start informal talks without insisting as a prior condition that the intifada end. Kids with stones, the Americans argued, could not be allowed to dictate the future of the Middle East. Once the talks began, the violence would subside. No formal negotiation would take place until it did.
At a session of the Likud central committee, which with the final merger of Herut and the Liberals had grown to three thousand members, Sharon and his two allies appeared to have the upper hand. Shamir announced that he accepted the list of constraints. The central committee, relieved to have avoided a bruising showdown, immediately endorsed the prime minister’s statement unanimously. Sharon, Modai, and Levy stood on the platform flashing V signs to their supporters.
But Shamir was not contemplating his own political demise quite yet. The committee’s endorsement prompted unexpected resistance: threats from Labor to secede and exhortations from Washington forced Shamir to demand, and obtain, a re-endorsement of the original plan by the full cabinet, with an addendum, for what it was worth, declaring that the new decision committed all the ministers.
In the months that followed, speculation grew that the prime minister had had all he could take from Sharon and was considering firing him. Shamir himself hinted at a thought that had clearly been exercising him privately for some time: the Likud would do well to skip a generation in its leadership stakes, moving on from him to the group of bright young “princes” who surrounded him.7 These included Dan Meridor and Ehud Olmert, whose fathers had been Herut Knesset members; Ronni Milo, who was related by marriage to the Begins8—Shamir made all three of them ministers in his 1988 government; Benny Begin, son of the now-reclusive leader; and Benjamin Netanyahu, a brilliant young diplomat then serving as ambassador to the UN. Skipping a generation would mean passing over Moshe Arens, perhaps the Likud’s most competent and most widely respected politician. But Arens, who gre
w up in America, seemed to lack the fire in the belly that fuels unquenchable political ambition. Shamir was sorry to sacrifice him, but the upside was irresistible: sidestepping David Levy, whom he despised, and Sharon, whom he loathed.
A High Noon–type showdown with Sharon, full of political drama and personal venom, shaped up for February 12, 1990, the next scheduled session of the mammoth Likud central committee. Sharon, as chairman of the central committee, sent out three thousand invitations at the beginning of February, embossed with the logo of the Ministry of Industry and Trade. Shamir’s people, unhappy with the wording and suspicious that Sharon was planning some sort of procedural ambush, printed up their own invitations in the name of the prime minister and party leader and sent them out the next day. They also busily planted stories in the media to the effect that Sharon’s dismissal was both inevitable and imminent. The prime minister himself told party stalwarts that things had to come to a head. “The central committee must decide to endorse my speech or to reject it, and to vote confidence in me for the past and for the future.”
Shamir would demand a yes-or-no vote on his policy and on his prime ministership. If he lost, he would step down, and that would very likely trigger new elections. He was confident that the central committee members, confronted by that sobering scenario, would give him their backing. At least half of them had jobs in government or local authorities, held directorships in state-owned companies, or held lucrative or prestigious (or both) positions on public commissions. These would all be in danger if the government fell.
Sharon demanded a vote specifically on the “constraints.” He wanted the central committee to choose between Shamir’s policy and his own. If Shamir lost, as he was likely to do under that procedure, and brought the government down, then so be it. The Likud could set up a narrow-based government with the far-right parties and the Orthodox, as it should have done, in Sharon’s view, straight after the election sixteen months before.
On the day itself, Sharon was back in his element: a general at war. He ordered his loyalists to arrive hours ahead of time and pack the front rows. Sharon, true to his military tactics from the earliest days of Unit 101, had prepared, in addition to his battle ranks, a feint designed to throw the enemy off balance. He opened the proceedings as chairman, urging members to maintain dignity and decorum and thus bring honor to their movement, in Israel and throughout the world. He would say a few words, then Shamir would make the keynote speech, then a policy debate would take place in which twenty-five members would take part, representing the positions of both sides. Then there would be a vote.
Members were digesting this, looking for a catch, when they thought they heard Sharon go on to say he had sent a letter of resignation to Shamir. “What’s that he said?” Modai asked the man next to him. Even “the constrainers” were taken totally unawares. Sharon read on. The hall broke into bedlam and then slowly subsided into total silence.
Mr. Prime Minister, I hereby tender my resignation. I have decided to resign from the government so that I can continue the struggle for the national goals that are in danger under the policy of the present government. I will continue as a Knesset member and as chairman of the party central committee.
Under your government Palestinian terror is raging throughout Israel … Jewish lives have become cheap. I can no longer be party to this … Your diplomatic proposal has put Israel on the road to the creation of a Palestinian state … I do not leave with a light heart. But there are moments when a man must stand up and start to shout. There are moments when one must awaken and fight with all one’s strength before disaster strikes. This is perhaps the last moment to do so. May you all be blessed.
Shamir, next up, said he was as surprised as everyone else. But he deflated Sharon’s attempted coup by saying that he had not received Sharon’s resignation letter and would react only once he had studied it. He then resumed his prepared speech, a forty-five-minute review of his diplomatic efforts thus far and of his government’s domestic policies:
I am conducting a difficult struggle against many different parties abroad in defense of our principles and our positions. I have to sustain huge amounts of animosity and vituperation from many quarters. That does not weaken my resolve to stand and fight for the things I wholeheartedly believe in. But I am sick and tired of this impossible situation in which I am viciously attacked from without and at the same time attacked by comrades from within who treat me to a daily barrage of insults.
I think I have the right therefore, morally and politically, to ask for your endorsement. People at home and abroad are entitled to know if I speak for our movement or not. The public in Israel needs to know who represents the Likud: I or my traducers.
He then read out the text of the resolution that he was submitting: “The central committee endorses the content of the prime minister’s policy statement. The central committee expresses its confidence in the prime minister and chairman of the party.” And he then did precisely what Sharon suspected he would do: he asked for a show of hands.9
A sea of hands went up. But Sharon, his alacrity belying his girth, was on his feet and at his microphone at the other end of the platform, reading out his resolution and asking for the members’ support. “Who is in favor?” he demanded, in his high but booming voice. “Who is in favor of eliminating terror? Raise your hands. Who is opposed to letting deportees participate?d Raise your hands. Who is in favor of eliminating terror? Who is in favor of eliminating terror?” Over and over. Mi be’ad chissul haterror? The question instantly entered Hebrew usage, and has firmly remained there ever since, as an expression of the quintessence of disingenuousness.
“I have won by massive majority. His statement has no significance,” Shamir shouted into his microphone, which by now had mysteriously lost its resonance. The thousands of hands were still up, but for what resolution? The serried ranks in the front kept up a chorus of “Arik, Arik.” Shamir delivered a final, hoarse shout into his microphone: “I thank the members of the central committee for the confidence that you have placed in me. In view of the disorder in the hall, I hereby close this session of the central committee. Any resolutions passed hereafter will have no validity.” Upon which he and his entourage swept out of the hall, followed by all the ministers loyal to him. Sharon, unperturbed, droned on, reading the “constraints” one by one and asking for a show of endorsement for each of them. At the end he announced that all of them had duly been endorsed.
“So, Arik Sharon, an own goal?” asked the well-known television interviewer Dan Shilon, kicking off a conversation with the ex-minister for the weekend issue of Yedioth Ahronoth. As though to rub it in, he added: “Since your resignation I haven’t met a single person who believes in the sincerity of your professed motives.” Sharon’s reply was classic: “That is one of the sad things that has happened in our public life. People find it difficult to believe that someone can get up and leave his cabinet seat over a matter of principle.” As for “the night of the microphones,” Shamir had tried “to steal the vote,” Sharon said, leaving him no alternative but to intervene. Shamir was “a dangerous man.” Shamir’s concessions were feeding terrorism and increasing the danger of war. “I am not prepared to return to a government headed by Yitzhak Shamir.”
Four months later, he returned, as minister of housing in a new government headed by Yitzhak Shamir. The new government was the narrow-based, rightist-religious coalition that Sharon had long demanded. Baker had decided to force the issue—and was delivered a resounding rebuff. The secretary tried to fuse Shamir’s original proposal together with a proposal from Egypt’s president, Mubarak, and with American ideas into one simple and direct question: “As regards the participation in the Israeli-Palestinian dialogue, would the government of Israel be ready to consider on a name-by-name basis any Palestinian who was a resident of the territories?” To say yes would implicitly admit deportees and dual addressees. Shamir said no. Shimon Peres, believing he could form a Labor-led narrow government wi
th the help of the ultra-Orthodox parties, engineered the collapse of the unity government in a Knesset vote on March 15, 1990.
“I felt battered, beaten, and betrayed,” Baker writes. “From the outset, I’d tried to give Shamir the benefit of the doubt … In the end, Shamir wasn’t even willing to embrace his own plan.”
But if Baker felt battered, Sharon felt buoyed, and justly so. He did not claim to have foreseen, when he resigned his cabinet seat, for just how short a time he’d be enjoying the bucolic life again. The government, after all, had two and a half years still to run. But he did now claim retrospective victory for the “constraints”: Shamir had defied the Americans over precisely the terms that Sharon and his allies had demanded that Israel reject. Shamir had “stopped at the edge of the precipice,” Sharon asserted triumphantly. “The drama surrounding my resignation perhaps catalyzed that welcome development.”10 More likely it did not, and Shamir would have refused Baker without any histrionics from Sharon. His and Arens’s endless foot-dragging was only good so long as they had room to maneuver. Once Baker decided to corner them, they reverted to the rigid rejectionism that was the true underpinning of their policy.
At any event, Sharon now urged all his party colleagues to set aside the frictions of the past, however raw and recent, and unite to defeat Peres’s attempt to form a government that would throw any constraints to the wind and rush headlong into a chimerical peace with the PLO. A Peres government would be dependent, worse yet, on the votes of the Arab parties, which, Sharon insisted, were simply PLO surrogates in the Israeli parliament. Shamir was their leader, Sharon assured his colleagues. No one was challenging that. They must all work to ensure that he had “a decisive, national government” to lead.
Shamir was of the same mollifying mind. He pointedly invited Sharon to attend the Likud ministerial caucuses and encouraged him to pick up his contacts with the haredi rabbis and their political lieutenants. Sharon needed no encouragement. “We must restore the rightist-religious alliance between us and the Orthodox,” he said.
