FRIDAY REVIEW: Sharon

Had Ariel Sharon died two years ago, he would have been remembered as the butcher of Beirut and Jenin, a brutal general who was publicly condemned by the 1983 Kahan Commission. But this summer’s withdrawal from Gaza, followed by his split from the more ideological Likud party has reinvented him in the eyes of the world. Thus as ‘The Bulldozer’ lies critically ill in a Jerusalem hospital, the New York Times regrets the loss of a leader who might have been able to bring about a unilateral settlement to the conflict with the Palestinians “on the back of his own charisma and appeal”. Meanwhile Britain’s left-leaning Guardian lauds his ability to take “take really tough and unpopular decisions”.

But how tough have these decisions really been? Far from being a characteristic of Sharon as an individual, the extreme swings of his career simply reveals the fluidity and superficiality of contemporary Israeli politics. When examined in context, Israel’s own war on terror seems less about the assertive actions of ideologically parties, and more like a drifting ship, reacting to events without referral to any prior logic or program. In this way it provides an interesting parallel to that of the US, one which this blog aims to expose.

Today, Israeli politics appear to be irredeemably unstable, with one cobbled-together coalition following another at an alarming rate. It is worth remembering that this was not always the case; from 1948, the year the state was founded, until 1977, the country was governed by a single party, Labour. While much of the West found stability under social-democratic politics during this period, Israel remained an exceptional case, as no other party mounted a serious challenge until the early 1970s. This was largely due to the country's unique international situation, set among hostile neighbors.

War played an integral part in maintaining the political cohesion of Israel. Domestic conflicts of the kind that erupted in other states were subsumed under the higher cause of survival in the Israeli case. Labour relations, for instance, were managed through a large state union, the Histradrut. This state of constant alert was legitimized to the population in different ways during Israel's history - at first through a language of radical social democracy that played upon the experiences of many of the early Zionists and immigrants in the labor politics of Europe. Later the experience of the Holocaust was mobilized, making the case that Israel's survival was necessary for the survival of Jews everywhere.

As long as the state faced credible enemies on the outside, consensus could reign within. And Israel was able to exploit the threat further by becoming, during the 1960s, a staunch US ally against the radical Arab nationalist regimes. This was both a material and ideological prop: Israel became a massive recipient of US aid, while enjoying the prestige of a partnership with the world's foremost power. The Zionist project was sustained through these various mechanisms despite the fact that its initial impetus, European anti-Semitism, was by now an irrelevance to the vast majority of Jews.

Yet such a situation could not last. As the project of third world nationalism ground to a halt, the leading states of the movement, such as Egypt, were forced to come to terms with the West and its allies. After the wars of 1973, Egypt's pragmatic president, Anwar Sadat, went to the table and emerged from the 1979 Camp David process with the Sinai Peninsula and the second largest US annual aid package (Israel remained in first place). While the upheaval that the peace treaty caused in Egypt was perhaps more dramatic - Sadat was assassinated within two years - its impact on Israel was equally revolutionary. The dissipation of the outside threat (the menace of the remaining radical Arab regimes was largely illusory without the might and ideological pull of Egypt) left the Israeli political project without a guiding principle. The institution of the Labour party was an early casualty.

It seems as though this remains the case today. The past 25 years have been marked by a series of crisis periods, as Israeli elites have failed to find a contemporary mission for Zionism. The 1980s began with the ill-fated invasion of Lebanon, which only sharpened the cynical mood in Israeli politics. Meanwhile, the end of the Cold War - the collapse of the Soviet Union and the seismic shifts in the global balance of forces - exacerbated tensions with the US. American leaders now tend to view Israel as much as a liability as a useful ally, a tension which became apparent when Israel threatened to join the coalition against Iraq during the first Gulf War. The peace process represents one attempt to come to terms with these shifts, while Sharon et al’s tough line on the West Bank wall represents another. The two political strategies are simply symptoms of the underlying problem. Indeed, Sharon has pursued both at the same time; even as he breaks away from Likud to form his new peace-orientated party, security forces have continued to perform extra-judicial assassinations of Palestinian militants.

Nor is the peace/conflict axis the only direction in which Israeli politics can sway. The new leader of the Labour party, Amir Peretz, is a former trade unionist who wants to direct discussion back to the question of social justice among Israelis. The latest reports suggest, however, that this new initiative is likely to succumb to the generalized cynicism about the political leadership. Just like Sharon, the Labour party is desperately seeking a way to reconstruct the social cohesion that once marked the Jewish state. In the meantime, we can expect more stunts and pragmatism from whoever follows ‘The Bulldozer’.

Critics of the current US war on terror would do well to examine the parallel that Israel represents. Rather than focus on the outrages that these governments inarguably practice, we must get to grips with the underlying dynamics of this conflict. The war on terror throws up many contingent events. If we simply react to these, our politics will become equally contingent.