OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 8 November — A day after Benjamin Netanyahu was sworn in as Israel’s foreign minister, tensions emerged between him and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon yesterday, as Netanyahu called for a hard-right shake-up and Sharon vowed to plot a steady course. With Sharon pledging to keep a promise to key ally Washington not to harm Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, Netanyahu was quick to say an anticipated US war on Iraq would provide the ideal opportunity to boot the Palestinian leader into exile.
The Israeli press reported an immediate opening of hostilities between aides of the two long-term rivals who now find themselves together in a caretaker government three months ahead of early elections, in which Likud is tipped to outpoll other parties. The daily Haaretz said Likud insiders were worried that the sniping between the two camps could damage the party’s standing among voters.
One of the first battles is setting the date for the Likud primary. Sharon is pushing for early elections to capitalize on his current popularity, while Netanyahu needs time to organize his campaign.
Netanyahu was already using his return to the limelight to prime his own leadership chances, telling The Jerusalem Post he would pull the country out of its financial crisis. “Of the last four prime ministers, I am the only one to have left the country in a better shape than I received it,” he said, slamming his boss’ “absence of a coherent economic policy.”
Netanyahu also said in an interview published yesterday that Ariel Sharon’s leadership had left Israel in “dire straits”. “I am running (for the Likud leadership) because the country is in dire straits and we have to get it out,” Netanyahu told The Jerusalem Post.
Netanyahu dismissed the notion that his criticism might be harmful to the new caretaker government and Likud’s electoral chances as “absurd,” commenting that “the country is in dire straits and we have to get it out.”
“I want to concentrate on solutions. Mine will be a government of solutions,” he said, talking as if he were already in power. And Netanyahu, who is to square off soon against Sharon in a bid to lead their extreme right-wing Likud party, followed up with a warning that implementing a US “road map” for peace with the Palestinians would be put on hold pending a US strike on Baghdad.
“The American road map is not on the agenda at the moment” as a result of a possible attack on Iraq, army radio quoted Netanyahu as saying. Sharon has expressed strong reservations about the plan, based on a US outline and developed by the so-called Middle East quartet of Washington, the United Nations, the European Union and Moscow.
Netanyahu has openly called for a Palestinian state to be ruled out, while Sharon has signed up to Bush’s “vision” of such a state, albeit with strict constraints. But unlike former Premier Netanyahu, Sharon has been cautious not to openly contradict Bush, with whom he has forged extremely close ties.
Israel is also preparing for possible Iraqi missile attack should the United States launch an offensive against Iraq. Israel Radio said the military successfully tested two upgraded Patriot anti-missile missiles in the southern Negev desert on Wednesday. An army spokesman had no immediate comment.
An earlier version of the US-made missile, originally designed to shoot down aircraft, had limited success against Iraqi Scuds that slammed into Israel in the 1991 Gulf War.
In an interview that appeared in the Ma’ariv daily yesterday, Ephraim Halevy, who retired last month as head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency, said he expected Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and Arafat to “disappear from the scene” within a year.
UN Middle East coordinator Terje Roed-Larsen said yesterday top officials working on the “road map” would meet in Europe next month to move the plan forward. He said participants would include UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, US Secretary of State Colin Powell, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and EU foreign policy coordinator Javier Solana.
Meanwhile, Sharon’s new right-wing defense minister, Shaul Mofaz, sworn in after a Labour Party walkout last week brought down Sharon’s 20-month cross-part coalition, has also advocated exiling Arafat. Mofaz was working the phones in his new job yesterday, speaking with Jordan’s Abdallah, his office said.
On the ground, Israeli undercover forces in the West Bank arrested the local political leader of the Islamic Jihad movement in Tulkarm. Palestinian witnesses and security sources named him as 38-year old Abdel-Nasser Sweif. Two activists of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine were also arrested near Bethlehem.
In the West Bank city of Nablus, Israeli forces dynamited the family home of Firas Fidi, an activist from the Hamas group. The army said he helped plan a bombing that killed 19 people on a Jerusalem bus on June 19 and an attack on Oct. 27, when a bomber subdued by bystanders blew up in the Jewish settlement of Ariel, killing three Israeli officers.
