From bad to worse

By Graham Usher
Five days before Israelis go to the polls, it is almost risible the lengths to which Israeli, Arab and European leaders will go to stave off the inevitable. For unless the polls have been lying through their teeth and every Israeli pundit is wrong in his or her prognosis, Israel's next prime minister is going to be Ariel Sharon, possibly at the head of the most extreme coalition in Israel's history.
The salvage operation reached its nadir following Yasser Arafat's ferocious speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos on 28 January. In a rare show of rage, he accurately described and denounced "the savage and barbaric war the present Israeli government has been waging against our Palestinian people for the past four months."
Alarmed by such honesty and by Ehud Barak's threat to terminate all diplomatic contacts with "that man", assorted European and UN diplomats swiftly forced Arafat to make amends. Suitably chastened and contrite, he appeared on Israeli TV the next day, condemning Palestinian "shooting attacks" in the occupied territories and referring to Barak as "Rabin's successor."
Appeased, Barak said he would "contemplate" a meeting with Arafat sometime before the Israeli election on 6 February on condition that its remit would be vague and "success" guaranteed. And the summit may well happen, with the most likely venue and date being Sharm Al-Sheikh on 4 February. But what probably won't accrue from the meeting is any change in Barak's electoral fortunes. Prior to the Taba negotiations, the Israeli leader was trailing Sharon by around 16 points in the polls. And after the Taba negotiations, he was trailing Sharon by the same 16 points.
Indeed, the panic is now so great in Barak's Labour camp that there are again urgent solicitations to him to dismount and pass the reins to Shimon Peres, currently running neck and neck with Sharon.
Barak, who has yet to make a correct tactical decision in 22 months of office, shows no signs of breaking the habit now. On the contrary, "I believe the public will wake up at a certain point," he told a meeting of Israel's Foreign Press Association on 30 January, "maybe on Friday, when it becomes clear that no other candidate will be appearing." Under Israel's electoral law, Friday is the last day Barak can stand down in favour of Peres.
Palestinians have watched this theatre with about the same interest reserved for watching whitewash dry on wood. But they are concerned and angered by the increasingly partisan stance their leaders have taken in Israel's election campaign. Blowing all neutrality to the wind, on 29 January PLO negotiator Yasser Abed Rabbo called on the Palestinian electorate in Israel to "vote to defeat Sharon". This, he added, would be in "the supreme interest of the Palestinian people". But the "supreme interest" of the 1.2 million Palestinian citizens of Israel would appear rather to be rid of a prime minister who ignored their demands for 18 months and, when last October they took to the streets to protest their plight, ordered his police to shoot dead 13 of them.
It is because of this consensus that each of Israel's four main Arab parties have called on their supporters to either boycott or cast a blank slip on 6 February. The result, according to a poll in Israel's Maariv newspaper on 30 January, is that only 35 per cent of the Palestinian electorate will vote for Barak. In 1999 elections, he had won 95 per cent.
Their 3.2 million compatriots in the West Bank and Gaza share the same sentiment, and with greater reason. For them, in the opinion of a Fatah leader in Nablus, the difference between Sharon and Barak is one of style. Sharon "wore the true face of Israel", he says, colonial, racist and arrogant in its abuse of power. Barak "wore the false face". He charmed the western world with his talk of "peace" and "ending the conflict" but, in the most ruthless suppression in the occupied territories anyone can remember, his army and settlers have killed 360 Palestinians, injured 13,000, razed thousands of acres of Palestinian land and destroyed 500 Palestinian homes.
"This is not to say Palestinians see no difference between Sharon and Barak," says Palestinian analyst Mustafa Barghouti. "Probably Sharon is worse. But the comparison is between bad and worse. And by their actions both are bad -- very, very bad". And perhaps the only real regret Palestinians feel is that both cannot be defeated on 6 February.
Recommend this page
Related stories:
Campaigning in Taba
Laying the ground for Sharon
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
Send a letter to the Editor