Forward to Israeli Elections - Part II

This is Part II. Check out Part I first.

Now, think about how that would effect Israel: Sharon's Kadima would have 31. The Likud, 25. That's already 56 of the 61 needed to form a government. It would not take much to get UTJ in, knowing that if they don't, Shas or Shinui will. On the other side, Kadima's 31, Labour's 16, and the religious parties would make a coalition as well. Sharon would likely prefer the former, as it means less concessions in terms of cabinet seats and money.

But there's a far more important point. The entire left would be made up of: 8 Arab seats; 3 Yachad seats; and 16 Labour seats. That's 27 seats. The religious parties would have 17. Likud and the National Union/NRP would have 37, Shinui's 7 somewhat ineffectively in the middle. Sharon will have created a country in which 93 seats are in parties which lean right in terms of national security. That is a huge number.

I wrote a post a while back titled Sharon the Genius? in which I noted that Sharon may be making a win-win gamble:

Sharon is making a brilliant strategic move. He has decided that Israel must show the world the true state of Palestinian terrorism, and the inability of the Palestinians to be a true nation among the other nations of the world. They are purely devoted to terrorism and the destruction of Israel: Not the rebuilding of a proud Palestinian nation, on their "rightful lands," as they claim. Therefore, the best way to show this is to pull the curtain away, and show the world what is truly going on behind it. It is a win-win situation for Israel (discounting the tragic losses of hundreds of homes), as there are only two possibilities:

1) The terror stops. The Palestinians immediately shape up, begin building an infrastructure, controlling the terror, and taking away the terror groups' power; anti-Israel sentiment is removed from the schools and streets, and children begin going to school on a regular basis. Jobs are created, trade begins, and corruption is removed from the Palestinian leadership.

OR

2) The terror does not stop. Palestinians continue assaulting Israel with rockets and mortars. Wanton destruction. Borders are controlled by either nobody or terrorists. Abbas has no control over Hamas and the other groups. Hamas builds a museum for terror weapons. Children join terror rallies - and die when explosives go off.

More importantly, I quoted another article there which made some excellent points.

"Brilliant tactician, lousy strategist." So goes the conventional wisdom about the old bulldozer Ariel Sharon.

But that assessment is exactly backward.

Sharon's strategic insight has always proved more impressive than his messy tactical operations. For now, keep that in mind — even as we seem to watch divided Israelis yell at each other while united Palestinians gloat about expelling the Zionists.

Gen. Sharon's counterattack across the Suez Canal in October 1973 during the Yom Kippur war was also seen as reckless, in its disregard for logistics and lines of communication. His 1982 army that invaded Lebanon proved tactically lax in allowing allied Christian militias to commit atrocities.

But Sharon's long-term thinking? That's another story altogether. Trapping the Egyptian 3rd Army in the Sinai, and then showing the world that Cairo itself was defenseless in the path of an Israeli armored division, was a strategic masterpiece aimed at ending the 1973 war outright to Israel's advantage.

The march into Lebanon forced Yasser Arafat out of the Middle East for a decade — and he might have been discredited for good as a defeated terrorist had third parties not escorted him to Tunis or brought him back under the Oslo accords.

Sharon is doing the same thing now. His seemingly reckless abandonment of his own party looks risky at the outset; but who is there that could honestly defeat him in an election? Meanwhile, he's pandered so much to the left that his "centrist" party will reduce the left to less than 25% of the Knesset. The majority of the Kadima MKs will still be right-wingers: They're just right-wingers who followed Sharon rather than their old party. Sharon will have consolidated so much power, he will be able to do whatever he pleases.

And that's not really a bad thing. Whatever one wants to say about the Gaza disengagement, it's already done. I don't believe Sharon will truly remove too many more settlements. He will use every single attack as an excuse to extend the wall a little further, to expand the larger communities in the West Bank just a bit more. He will have the backing of 90 MKs to declare all out attacks on Gaza if any trouble brews. He will have their backing to establish the entire Jerusalem as firmly Israel's - with zero possibility of it ever being divided. He will do so by pushing for final status talks with a government behind him that leans so heavily to the right, the US and others will say to themselves, "You know, this is as good as it gets." The right will go kicking and screaming the whole way, not wanting to concede anything - which one can choose to agree with from a philosophical standpoint - but in the end, Sharon will push it all through.

Sharon's dream is to work out the best possible long-term deal for his country. In his eyes, this means creating secure, unquestionable borders and forcing the Palestinians to act. If they act properly, then it was all worth it for the peace; if they don't, it will be that much easier to go in and correct any issues - then, after they've learned their lesson, it will be all worth it as well. More than that, however, he will have retained large swaths of the West Bank and continuous borders throughout Israel - a deal which would be scoffed at if one were sitting at the negotiating table. Sharon is essentially forcing a deal on Israel's terms: Not on the terms most of us would prefer, and perhaps even less than what he himself would want. But he will shove down the Palestinians' throats that this is not an offer, but a present. They have no choice but to accept it. And, whether they accept or not, they will pay the consequences for anything and everything that they do.

In the long run, Sharon may just turn out to be a genius after all.