Israeli Political Roundup - Say I Won't
Inside the government, Sharon goes all Kaiser Sose on the Shinui amatuers and the Likid morons:
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is willing to lose Wednesday night's vote on the first reading of the 2005 budget bill in order to prove to his Likud colleagues that the formation of a national-unity government is required to prevent early elections... The leader of the so-called Likud rebels, MK Uzi Landau, said he would not allow Sharon to trick the Likud into allowing the Labor Party into the coalition. He vowed to obtain a majority in the Knesset to block a national-unity government.
Well, with heavy-weights like Uzi "hey, I've almost succeeded hundreds of times" Landau, this is shaping up to be the kind of ass-kicking that Syracuse administered to BC last week, sending my beloved Pittburgh Panthers to the Fiesta Bowl. Meanwhile, Shinui begins to get that sinking feeling that maybe, just maybe, they've bitten off a little more than they can chew:
Shinui attempted to diffuse the crisis yesterday by suggesting that the budget vote be postponed until a solution to the disagreement can be found, but Sharon refused. "I want you in the government, but you created this crisis, and you will have to find a way out of it," Sharon told Interior Minister Avraham Poraz, who requested the postponment on Shinui's behalf.
Shinui was thinking: "hey, this is safe - Sharon has no history of retaliating against enemies in order to establish a deterrent. We'll be fine." Seriously, how many times does Sharon have to throw people out of the government before people figure out that he's not messing around? And I'm actually a fan of Tommy Lapid!
And outside the government, the Barak circus continues apace:
The Labor Party last night provided its members and the entire public a pitiful, crazed show of force... For the sake of a holy cause - blocking Barak - the convention's organizers were prepared to even risk lives. They deliberately hired a small hall, with 900 seats, when they knew that the central committee has twice as many members. The overcrowding was intolerable. Outside, several hundred frustrated central committee members were embittered by the doors closed to them. From the start, it was obvious there would not be a secret ballot. It was all a well-planned exercise meant to block Barak: from the general confusion, to the lack of clarity over the voting procedure, to the proposal by Benjamin Ben-Eliezer to hold the vote at the convention which might convene in two or three weeks.
And what Central Committee meeting of any sort would be complete without one of Israel's Old Great Men definitively demonstrating to greener, more excitable youngsters how hardball politics really works:
Peres, by the way, did not open his mouth yesterday. He sat on the stage in the flattering black turtleneck that he has taken to wearing lately. He kept a poker face, expressionless, as if everything that was taking place around him had nothing to do with him. He let the boys, the soldiers, play before him according to a script prepared in advance.
Unfotunately for Peres, it's so hard to get credit for destroying Barak nowadays when he's doing such a good job himself:
Taking a page out of the handbook of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in an infamous Likud meeting, when Barak saw that the meeting was not going his way, he rose from his seat in the first row of the auditorium and grabbed the microphone from former minister Moshe Shahal who was chairing the event...
"What you just did now changed the Labor central committee into the Likud central committee and you should be ashamed of yourself," Shahal said... "We are not the Likud, we are Labor."
It's funny because it's true.
The Jerusalem Post's Nina Gilbert apparently picked up a copy of Ha'aretz or Ma'ariv and realized that Sharon lost a couple of no-confidence votes yesterday. We're all very happy for her. She does get a good quote that I haven't seen elsewhere though:
National Union MK Zvi Hendel said Yahad should put Sharon on its list for the next elections, which he said would be held soon.
Oh, and because today Sharon is still Sharon and Ha'aretz is still Ha'aretz, the background page has another editorial predicting Sharon's collapse. How desperate are they to keep churning out "Sharon is finished articles?" So desperate that this article was literally created by cutting and pasting two two different articles that they published yesterday. But I guess it beats working for a living. You might want to read it. Unless you have important sock-folding to do or something.
While we're on the subect of the fantasy world that the Ha'aretz editorial page lives in, you should also go ahead and read this typically nuetral and oh-so-suprising Ha'aretz peice about the eminent demise of Sharon, the disintegration of the disengagement plan, and the permanent downfall of Likud. Then when I rant about just how badly the Israeli press lets their dearest wishes influence their published opinions, you'll remember this and say to yourself "I should read Mere Rhetoric more often."
This just in: Sharon always gets what he wants.
UPDATE: The Information Department of the Israel Foreign Ministry has their editorial summaries up, and this Yediot Aharono editorial looks pretty interesting:
Yediot Aharonot, in its second editorial, remarks that the ountry is now effectively being run by two coalitions - "One (Likud, Labor, Shinui) to approve the disengagement plan, and the second (Likud, the haredim, the NRP, and Shinui) to approve the budget." The editors highlight the problems of such an approach and suggest that Prime Minister Sharon has two choices: "Bring Labor into the government and risk a split in the Likud, or risk early elections."
I don't see what's so bad about that. I mean, sure, it means that every Monday is a potential coalition crises, but that just means more traffic for Mere Rhetoric.
