Word: based
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...reelection. The win allows him to select the coalition partners of his choice, but the prime minister is refusing the option of building a narrow coalition with Likud's natural allies among the far-right and religious parties. Instead, to the consternation of his own party's base, Sharon is bending over backwards to make dove Amram Mitznah his senior coalition partner...
...Sharon denying his own base in order to draw a party of reluctant doves who differ sharply with his policies into a national unity government? The answer may lie in the fact that the unspoken coalition-partner of any Israeli government is the President of the United States - the ally whose requests Israel cannot afford to ignore and whose red lines it cannot afford to cross. Sharon, of course, has no worries on that front - at least for now. He has achieved a unity of purpose with the Bush administration that few had thought possible when he was first elected...
...willingness to accommodate his political needs - Washington refrained, for example, from releasing its "road map" for peace before the Israeli election specifically in order to avoid putting pressure on Sharon - the wider U.S. interests in the Middle East and beyond inevitably put Washington into conflict with Sharon's political base, even if not necessarily with the prime minister himself. The U.S. has, for example, insisted that Israel refrain from expelling Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat from the occupied territories - a demand popular among Likud supporters, and even more so among the parties of the far right. The U.S. has also signaled...
...Having the Labor Party as a coalition partner rather than right-wing and religious parties even more hard-line than Likud therefore gives Sharon the domestic political cover to make decisions unpopular with his own base but necessary for his ties with Washington. Indeed, Mitznah's presence in the government would make managing the relationship easier for the Bush administration too by offsetting any domestic pressure in the U.S. against restraining Israel's more hard-line instincts - better to have the Israeli government drawing its own red lines by virtue of a coalition agreement than imposing those red lines from...
...Sharon's aides have vowed that the prime minister will make Mitznah an offer he can't refuse, believing that pressure from the party's base and the state of crisis-alert brought on by the prospect of U.S. action in Iraq will force Labor into a coalition. Ironically, the dovish party's presence in government has been made more important precisely because of the strength of Sharon's mandate from the Right, which the prime minister will want to dilute somewhat in order to pursue his own version of a peace plan with his more potent coalition partner...