British Prime Minister Tony Blair should be applauded for going ahead with tomorrow’s London peace conference on the Middle East despite Israel’s prevention of Palestinian delegates from attending. The holding of the conference shows that Blair is not to be dissuaded from attempts at reviving the peace process, whether the obstacles be Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon or suicide bomb attacks like the ones which killed 22 Israelis in Tel Aviv last week and which led Sharon to bar Palestinians from traveling to London.
Just as important, Blair’s determined stand to hold the conference is in reply to America’s passive role, that of a holding action designed to temper the worst of the violence while it pursues other policy objectives, such as the toppling of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. This sort of stalemate has had European and Arab allies — and even Israeli doves — exasperated over the refusal of the Bush administration to aggressively pursue a peace plan. The most significant US attempt to pacify the situation has been the “road map” that US officials drafted in conjunction with the UN, the European Union and Russia. But the Bush administration postponed its unveiling last month, citing the need to wait for the outcome of Israel’s Jan. 28 elections.
Sharon was initially viewed as winning the poll in a cakewalk over the dovish Labor Party leader Amram Mitzna until the latest political storm broke over a $1.5-million loan the prime minister reportedly received from a South African businessman to cover debts run up as a result of financial improprieties in his Likud leadership campaign in 1999. Israeli police have opened an inquiry into the loan affair and have sought the South African Justice Ministry’s cooperation.
Sharon went on television to defend himself against the allegations of wrongdoing but in an unprecedented move, he was forced to suffer the embarrassment of having his live address pulled off the air after election officials deemed his defense as being too political.
But what has really hurt Sharon is that with two weeks to go before the elections, Likud’s previously unassailable lead in the opinion polls is rapidly evaporating and its prospects of emerging as the largest party in the 16th Knesset are now in doubt.
Mitzna is still the underdog in the race, with Labor polling only 22 seats compared with Likud’s 32. Analysts say Likud may drop under 30 when weekend polls come out, meaning it will have lost a quarter of its strength since the start of the campaign.
The scandal’s fallout has been evident. Almost a third of Israelis think Sharon is no longer worthy of holding office, according to a poll released on Wednesday. The poll said 31 percent of Israelis questioned thought Sharon unworthy of serving as premier, under the same criteria which led him to sack a deputy minister in his Likud party for refusing to cooperate with a police probe into vote-buying at the party’s primaries. However, 46 percent said Sharon, who had until now managed to emerge personally unscathed from the series of scandals dogging his right-wing party, should stay on.
Sharon may be able to weather the storm if he is able to shift the agenda back to terrorism and security — his perceived strong points. Working in Sharon’s favor is a decision by the attorney general to freeze the investigation until after the elections, which should spare him damaging pictures of him heading into police headquarters. What should worry the people in the Arab world is the fact that Sharon’s refusal to make peace has not done serious damage to his reputation or his electoral fortunes.
