Sharon seeks partners in crime

Submitted by AWL on 7 February, 2003 - 3:02

By Dan Katz

Israeli Labour party leader Amram Mitzna has told Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that his party would not join a national unity government. He said that Labour’s decision was taken out of a sense of “national responsibility”.

Senior Labour members agreed on Sunday 2 February that Labour could not join a government unless Sharon agreed to implement the platform Labour had promised its voters — evacuating the Gaza Strip, relocating isolated and illegal settlements, reassigning 1.5 billion shekels from the settlements’ budget to social portfolios, and completing the West Bank security fence.

Whether that position is held to remains to be seen. A Labour party source is quoted as saying that should Sharon offer Mitzna “a secular unity government” — a coalition with Shinui, Labor, and Yisrael b’Aliyah — Labour will not be able to refuse.

Labour was a partner under Sharon’s Likud government until October 2002. Shimon Peres served as Sharon’s foreign minister and Binyamin Ben-Eliezer as defence minister, taking responsibility for the savage clampdown in the Occupied Territories. Peres is keen to discuss terms for a new coalition.

Sharon wants Labour as a coalition partner as cover for his policy, at home and abroad.

Sharon has said he accepts the principles of a speech George Bush made on 24 June 2002, and will bring this plan before the new government. According to his interpretation, the first stage relates to demands to be made of the Palestinians: a total cease-fire, comprehensive reforms, and removing Yasser Arafat from power. Only then will Israel make concessions and agree to a Palestinian state in provisional borders.

Sharon wants to stop plans for an imposed international peace through the “road map” plan prepared by the Quartet of the US, the European Union, the UN and Russia. The “road map,” calls for a Palestinian state in provisional borders by the end of 2003, and a final status agreement by 2005. Sharon is eager to get George Bush’s agreement before the start of the war with Iraq.

Meanwhile the Palestinians continue to suffer. William Bell, author of a new Christian Aid report, says: “The Palestinians are currently living in a state of extreme, worsening poverty. Almost three-quarters of Palestinians now live on less than US$2 a day.”

The report details how, in the ten years of the Oslo peace process, living standards have worsened for almost all Palestinians living in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Last year, due to Israeli closures of these areas, Palestinian earnings from agriculture fell by 70 per cent.

Doctors report clear growth in important indicators of poverty including child malnutrition, anaemia in pregnant women and a sharp increase in numbers of underweight babies. Stress-related conditions such as heart disease and hypertension have also increased. Since the beginning of the second intifada, in September 2000, new cases at mental health clinics have grown by 100 per cent — alarmingly, most of these cases are children.

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