-Caveat Lector- Sharon warns Labour: join me or we vote again http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,884957,00.html Victory soured for prime minister as left's refusal to consider coalition pushes Likud towards deal with far right
Chris McGreal in Jerusalem Thursday January 30, 2003 The Guardian Ariel Sharon yesterday threatened to call another election if the refusal by the battered Labour opposition to join a coalition government forces him into the arms of the far right and ultra-orthodox religious parties. "I do not plan to establish a narrow rightwing government under any circumstances," Mr Sharon told Israeli television. "If there is no choice and I am unable to form a unity government, I will not hesitate to hold elections again." The final results of Tuesday's general election, barring a small proportion of votes from diplomatic missions and some soldiers, saw Mr Sharon's Likud party almost double its representation in the knesset to 37 seats. Labour lost a quarter of its seats, falling to only 19. The surprise of the election was Shinui, the fiercely secular party of Yosef "Tommy" Lapid which is agitating for the creation of a government devoid of any ultra-religious parties. It more than doubled its seats to 15, making it the third largest party in the knesset. Smaller parties slumped badly. The ultra-orthodox Shas lost a third of its seats and the leader of the left- wing Meretz, Yossi Sarid, resigned after support for his party dropped. But while Mr Sharon's rightwing bloc has a healthy majority with 67 seats in the 120-seat knesset, he would be reliant on the far right - notably the extremist National Union - to forge a functioning government. The prime minister has now said categorically that he does not want that. Mr Sharon's aides said the first approach will be to Labour and, if that fails, he will sound out Shinui. But Shinui's insistence that it will not serve in any government with ultra- religious parties - along with its demands for legislation forcing ultra- orthodox Jews to serve in the army, and for curbs on the huge subsidies to religious schools - may be more than Mr Sharon can swallow. The Israeli left, battered by the scale of the electorate's rejection of its policies and past, is divided on the next step. The Labour leader, Amram Mitzna, says he wants to maintain a "fighting opposition" to challenge Mr Sharon's policies in the expectation that his administration will collapse within a year or so. But many eyes in Labour are on the former leader, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, who is blamed by some in the party for the scale of the defeat. Mr Ben-Eliezer sat as defence minister in Mr Sharon's 20-month unity government, over seeing the brutal reoccupation of the West Bank last year to the horror of the peace camp. Although he belatedly ruled out Labour joining another coalition administration for the sake of form during the election campaign, Mr Ben- Eliezer's allies say that the party will become increasingly marginalised if it does not bow to the widespread public support for a unity government. While no immediate challenge to Mr Mitzna's leader ship is in the offing, it could be provoked by the threat of another general election or some external factor, such as war in Iraq, which would galvanise public support behind Mr Sharon's insistence that national security is at stake. Any challenge aimed at drawing the party into a unity government would probably also win the backing of the former Labour prime minister Shimon Peres, who also served in Mr Sharon's government, as foreign minister and chief apologist abroad. Mr Mitzna believes it would do his party and the peace camp yet more damage to again enter government with a prime minister whose tenure has seen more violence against Israeli citizens than at any time since the independence struggle in 1948, particularly when Mr Sharon is frequently blamed for provoking the latest Palestinian intifada with a confrontational visit to the Temple Mount. In reaching out to Labour, Mr Sharon provoked some wry smiles by invoking Yitzhak Rabin, the murdered dovish prime minister. "We must work together and I take great encouragement from the words of Yitzhak Rabin. He said, 10 years ago, the words that are truly so important and so true even now, as to the need for unity. Because we are in a terrible struggle, this is more important than any personal or party interest," he said. While Mr Sharon implicitly accuses those parties that refuse to join a unity government of putting party politics ahead of the national interest, Mr Mitzna and his allies say it is the prime minister who is jeopardising the Jewish state with his intransigent insistence that he can conquer "the terror" through force and impose an emasculated Palestinian state. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003 Forwarded for your information. 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