Friday, July 01, 2005
Does Sharon need a vote?
n light of recent events Prime Minister Sharon must heed the calls to hold national elections. Failure to do so makes a mockery of Israel's parliamentary system.
In a humiliating defeat for the Prime Minister, the Knesset recently carried three consecutive motions of no confidence against the Government. Whilst technically not amounting to the requisite majority to compel Sharon to step down, Knesset Speaker, Ruby Rivlin, himself a Likud member, publicly urged him to do so and hold elections.
The nation is now poised at a critical turning point. We have been repeatedly misled and fed half truths. Yet the Prime Minister still stubbornly refuses to hold a serious discourse on his controversial policies or take counsel from his colleagues. At issue are not the merits of ruling over Palestinians or retaining isolated settlements. That debate ended some time ago and the majority of Israelis now share a broad consensus that their ultimate objective must be to separate themselves from the Palestinians. Nor is the Gaza disengagement the central issue.
At the heart of the matter are the nation's strategic and national security goals, concerning which a wide range of respected Israelis encompassing every shade of the political spectrum - including the far left - warn that Sharon's current policies will culminate in a disaster of historic proportions.
In a humiliating defeat for the Prime Minister, the Knesset recently carried three consecutive motions of no confidence against the Government. Whilst technically not amounting to the requisite majority to compel Sharon to step down, Knesset Speaker, Ruby Rivlin, himself a Likud member, publicly urged him to do so and hold elections.
The nation is now poised at a critical turning point. We have been repeatedly misled and fed half truths. Yet the Prime Minister still stubbornly refuses to hold a serious discourse on his controversial policies or take counsel from his colleagues. At issue are not the merits of ruling over Palestinians or retaining isolated settlements. That debate ended some time ago and the majority of Israelis now share a broad consensus that their ultimate objective must be to separate themselves from the Palestinians. Nor is the Gaza disengagement the central issue.
At the heart of the matter are the nation's strategic and national security goals, concerning which a wide range of respected Israelis encompassing every shade of the political spectrum - including the far left - warn that Sharon's current policies will culminate in a disaster of historic proportions.
