PM Sharon was all out of bubblegum this morning:
Livnat and Netanyahu, along with ministers Yisrael Katz and Dan Naveh, were absent from the first round of voting. They walked into the plenum as the initial results were being read. They were then given the opportunity to vote on the plan, and they all voted in favor of the withdrawal. Ministers Silvan Shalom and Tzachi Hanegbi also voted in favor of the plan… Sharon fired Minister Without Portfolio Uzi Landau and Deputy Minister Michael Ratzon Tuesday evening for voting against his disengagement plan.
But then (almost as if he was a manipulative, attention-starved former Prime Minister), Bibi joined Livnat to drop this bombshell:
Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Education Minister Limor Livnat both threatened on Tuesday evening to quit unless Prime Minister Ariel Sharon agreed to hold a referendum on a pullout from Gaza. They said that Likud ministers Yisrael Katz and Dan Naveh would also quit if a decision is not made on the poll within 14 days.
Bummer. A failed referendum (and who knows if it’ll fail – but my hunch is that the rebels wouldn’t be calling for it unless they had numbers on this question, and there is a startling paucity of numbers in the public on this question) would end Sharon’s political career. He’d have to resign, and there’s no chance that he’d get back out of the primaries:
But the Sharon of 2005 will not be the Sharon of the previous elections, who doubled the Likud’s strength. His life is being threatened; his party is tripping him up; rabbis are preaching disobedience and civil war. Underground cells are plotting to bump him off, or do something big, like blowing up the Temple Mount, which will drench the country in blood and endanger the lives of Jews everywhere.
I’m not hopeful. Israelis have a history of failing to rise to their great leaders. They’ll likely do no better with Arik Sharon.
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