Last update - 00:00 11/10/2006
Natan Sharansky to announce retirement from politics
By Haaretz Service
Likud MK and famed Soviet dissident Natan (Anatoly) Sharansky was expected to announce his retirement from political life on Wednesday, according to Israel Radio.
Sharanksy, 58, could not be reached for comment, but aide Florina Elman-Levine confirmed his decision.
Sharansky will not speak publicly until he meets on Sunday with the head of his Likud Party, Benjamin Netanyahu, she said.
Israel Radio reported Wednesday that Sharansky would become a research fellow at the Shalem Center, a conservative Jerusalem think tank. A spokesman for the center would not confirm the report.
Sharansky was born in 1948 and studied mathematics in Moscow. He became a prominent leader of the struggle for Soviet Jewry and was imprisoned for nine years. He was released and allowed to immigrate to Israel in 1986.
In Israel, he took a hard line against the Arabs and became a champion for the rights of Soviet immigrants, entering politics in 1996 at the head of an immigrants' party.
But although his international renown never translated into star political power in Israel, he did serve in various Cabinets, pushing his hawkish agenda, and later merging his party with the hard-line Likud.
A member of Knesset since 1996, Sharansky has served in a number of ministerial roles, as Trade and Industry Minister, Interior Minister, Housing Minister, and Deputy Premier.
From March 2003 until May 2005, Sharansky served as Minister without Portfolio, overseeing Jerusalem and Diaspora Affairs.
In 1995 Sharanski founded Yisrael B'Aliyah, a political party designed to absorb Soviet immigrants into Israeli society. The party merged with Likud in 1993.
Sharansky voted against former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's disengagement plan, and resigned from the cabinet in April 2005 to protest the withdrawal. He was re-elected to Knesset in March 2006.
Sharansky's lackluster domestic political fortunes contrasted with his success abroad, where he caught Bush's attention with his book, "The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror."
Bush invited Sharansky to the White House to discuss it and has called Sharansky his "soul mate," citing him as an inspiration for Washington's campaign for worldwide democracy.
While Sharansky never became the leader many Israelis expected him to be, his reputation remains formidable, said Prof. Avraham Diskin, a political expert at Hebrew University.
"There are few dissidents from the former Soviet Union who are so famous worldwide, and he wrote a book that the leader of the free world keeps under his pillow," Diskin said. "You can't say he hasn't had an impressive career."
A leader of the Soviet Jewish Refusenik movement, Sharansky applied for a visa to Israel in 1973 and was refused on security guards. He was arrested by Soviet authorities in 1977 and convicted of treason on charges of spying for the United States. He was sentenced to 13 years of hard labor, and served 16 months in prison before being transferred to a Soviet labor camp, where he served for for nine years. He was released in 1986 in a U.S-Soviet prisoner exchange.