Word: sharone
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...neoconservative fantasy - and of the Likud government, which was handily re-elected last week - the Bush Administration has been dangerously out of touch in the Middle East. The standard term of art for what America should be doing is "engagement," a euphemism suggesting that we twist Ariel Sharon's arm. But effective diplomacy entails the twisting of all available arms, and Lieberman faults the White House for not pressuring the fatuous Europeans and deceitful Arabs "to get the Palestinian leadership to stop the terror." Indeed, the Middle East mess starts with the Arabs, with their state-fed spew of anti...
...simplistic: Yasser Arafat is an evildoer who has never intended to make peace. He winks at terrorism; he tries to purchase arms from the Iranians. He flirts with peace, then flees. The ideological argument has the subtlety of a punch in the nose: it is based in the Sharon-Likud conceit that Arabs "only understand" strength. This has a certain resonance with tough guys like Rumsfeld and Cheney. America's Likudnik tilt has empowered the Sharon government to preside over a dramatic increase in illegal - that is, unapproved - West Bank settlements: 70 new outposts in Palestinian areas, many of them...
...Foreign Minister Netanyahu is the man they think best suited to sell the tough policies of that government to the world. A smiling old man in a black yarmulke bent to kiss Netanyahu's hand. Back in the Suburban, Netanyahu pondered the coalition options of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The 74-year-old Likud chief professes a desire to revive the "unity government" he had with the Labor Party, but Labor's leaders say they're unwilling to re-enter a partnership that last week brought them to their worst showing in any Israeli election: Labor got only half...
...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...