The new alliance Peres- Sharon , a "post-modern tragedy"
Tel Aviv (AsiaNews) - Though expected, the announcement by Shimon Peres that he was leaving the Labour Party to support Ariel Sharon in the forthcoming Israeli elections has still come as a shock. The 82 year old Peres has been a protagonist of the Labour movement all his life, has several times been the Labour Party's leader, both in opposition and in government, and has been perceived by the public imagination as the foremost leader of the "peace camp" in Israel - the exact opposite of the image of the aggressive nationalist Sharon.
It is true that Sharon, after his unilateral withdrawal of the Israeli army and settlers from the Gaza Strip, is now seen by many outside Israel as having undergone a conversion to the "peace camp", but not many in Israel see it this way. Sharon himself makes it more or less clear that he is aiming for a unilateral solution to the conflict with the Palestinians (e.g. by means of the Wall being built in the West Bank), not a negotiated peace treaty of the kind that Peres has appeared to be advocating for some years.
Peres is not the only Labour politician to have crossed the lines. At least two other prominent members, former ministers, have done so. The general impression is of "post-modern politics", the death of ideology and the transformation of electoral politics into a personalised quest for fame and power. Still Peres's decision is also considered a personal tragedy. Peres recently lost his bid for re-election as Labour Party leader.
The winner, by about 2% of the vote, was a much younger man, Amir Peretz, the charismatic leader of the General Confederation of Labour. The new leader offered Peres the honorary position of President of the Party, but Shimon Peres, even at this age, did not feel ready for retiring to a purely honorary post, and still feels he must influence actual decision-making, even at the cost of abandoning his life-long political faith.
A connoisseur of Italian politics puts it like this: "It is as if [Massimo] D'Alema (the president of the "ex-communist" Democrats of the Left) had abandoned his own party and joined [Gianfranco] Fini (leader of the right-wing National Alliance)". Or, in American terms, as if (former President) Jimmy Carter had left the Democratic Party to support President Bush.
It is too early to speculate on the influence, if any, that Shimon Peres's move may have on the results of the elections (set for 28 March next year). Logically, he would simply draw away some voters from the Labour Party to Sharon's new centre-right formation, Kadimah (Foreward! Avanti!), leaving the total of the non-extreme-nationalist block unchanged.
Sharon himself is continuing to lead in the public opinion polls, after abandoning his own party, the right-wing Likud, and creating his new centre-right party. However, some expert observers warn that the voting public is essentially conservative, and that most Likud voters are still likely to stay with their party. Others though are of the opinion that the entire political landscape is being rearranged, and that post-ideological post-modern politics is genuinely replacing old loyalties, like a tsunami, or an earthquake. There is a long time still until 28 March.
All of this is of little direct significance to Israel's tiny Christian community. The great majority of Israel's Christian citizens belong to the Arab national minority, and their overriding concern - civil rights and equality - is shared with the much more numerous Muslim Arab citizens There has never been a "Christian vote", much less a "Catholic vote" in Israel. There is also no agreement where precisely the "Christian interest" lies. In principle, the Christian interest would appear to be in having as secularist and as left-wing a government as possible, since in Israel it is the secularist left wing that is normally most committed to civil rights and religious freedom.
Nonetheless, in concrete political terms, Israel has never had a Prime Minister more attentive to the Catholic Church than Ariel Sharon. It was the last Labour Party government (of Ehud Barak) that had decided to build a mosque for Islamist extremists right in front of the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth, and it was Ariel Sharon who later cancelled this decision.
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17/11/2005
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