Not by Volvos alone

[Classical_Liberal]

According to the opinion polls, most Israelis are in favor of disengagement and dismantling settlements, but Sharon's problem is with his party - with the far right and settlers from his own camp. When you've got characters like Uri Elitzur (Benjamin Netanyahu's former bureau chief) calling on soldiers to disobey orders and urging settlers to violently oppose troops sent in to evacuate them, and on top of that, the Israel Defense Forces are training a special unit of 2,000 soldiers in how to evict people by force, the grim prospect of civil war looms on the horizon.

Considering that the big fight is between the right and the far right, both inside the Knesset and out on the "battlefield," it's hard to understand why the Labor party is in such an ants-in-their-pants hurry to join what its leaders call a "unity government." Unity is the last thing we're likely to see. At most, Labor will be the scapegoat. When right fights right and blood starts to flow, you don't have to be a clairvoyant to see that Labor will be blamed. Just being in the government will be like playing with matches next to a puddle of gasoline on a hot day.

And there's something else I wouldn't sneeze at: Sharon doesn't have a majority for inviting Labor in. At the moment, only 15 Likud MKs support the idea. It's not so much the numbers that matter here as the power of the naysayers to sabotage Sharon's plans - among them Netanyahu, Silvan Shalom and Limor Livnat, whose portfolios the head honchos of Labor are drooling over.

Shimon Peres' attack on Netanyahu reflects a widespread belief in the Labor party: The idea that if Labor joins the government and fails to bring about a reversal of the current economic and social policy, whereby the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, the party will lose whatever consequence it ever had in the political arena......

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/441696.html