Sharon's last session

Knesset members at both ends of the political spectrum are convinced that the winter session of the Knesset, which opens tomorrow with an address by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, will be one of the most dramatic in recent years.

"The fate of diplomatic and economic issues will be sealed during the winter session," says Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin.

"This is going to be a very boisterous session," predicts Shinui lawmaker Ronnie Brizon.

"It will be a critical session, with life and death decisions, mainly due to the issues concerning the peace process," says MK Shaul Yahalom of the National Religious Party.

"I am sure it will be a fateful session," opines lawmaker Abdulmalik Dehamshe (United Arab List).

In his Knesset address tomorrow to mark the opening of the winter session, Rivlin will stress that "it has been years since we were faced with such fateful decisions. The parliamentary debates will be more profound than ever and the battle will be for all or nothing."

Rivlin will mention the Altalena affair of June 1948, when Israeli forces fired on a Jewish underground ship; and the atmosphere in Israel in the summer of 1995, a few months before the assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin following a campaign of incitement against him. Rivlin will call upon MKs to wage the bitter dispute responsibly.

"Even now, we are standing on the brink of catastrophe. Fifty years and more after the accursed day of the Altalena, it appears that we are again liable to face a terrible test. I appeal to the settlers, with a broken heart and a tearful eye and my back against the wall with them: Let us not, heaven forbid, use weapons against one another."

The main topics that will be the cause of storms in the Knesset plenum will be the disengagement plan and the ensuing bill for compensation to the settlers in Gush Katif and northern Samaria. When Sharon speaks, he will mention the cabinet decision of June 6, 2004, to approve the disengagement plan, and he will stress that he is determined to carry out the plan despite the opposition it arouses and his personal difficulty with uprooting settlers from their homes.

Sharon's first real test will be tomorrow, at the end of this address, when he asks the Knesset to approve his political statements. It is unclear how the group of rebel members in the Likud faction will vote. Will Minister without Portfolio Uzi Landau, Deputy Trade and Industry Minister Michael Ratzon and MKs Ehud Yatom, Gila Gamliel, Ayoub Kara, Yehiel Hazan and Gilad Erdan have the courage to raise their hands against Sharon? Will they be joined by National Union and NRP lawmakers?

Sharon apparently prefers not to start a confrontation with the rebels in the Likud at this early stage, and officials in the Prime Minister's Office tried last week to check the Knesset regulations as to whether it was possible to postpone the vote on Sharon's address until the Knesset convenes toward the end of the month for the presentation of the disengagement plan. Rivlin, who personally opposes the disengagement plan and may even vote against it, said no.

"There is no connection between the two votes, even though they deal with the same issue," Rivlin said.

Rabbi Yosef's orders

On November 3, the government is due to present the Knesset with the compensation bill for approval on its first reading. Yahalom has promised that his faction will make every effort, along with National Union faction members, to block the bill. "We will fight every clause in the bill, every line and every word," Yahalom says.

Shas will also vote against the disengagement plan. "Rabbi Ovadia Yosef has ordered us to vote against because this is a unilateral move that doesn't have the backing of any state, and there is no telling what ramifications it will have," says Shas MK Amnon Cohen.

In all likelihood, Sharon will still have no difficulty obtaining a majority for approving the compensation bill since the Labor Party and the left-wing factions (Yahad and the Arab parties), will support it.

"We will support the disengagement and the settler compensation bill," assures Yahad's Zahava Gal-On.

"There is no doubt that all the Arab factions will support giving the settlers compensation. Our policy is to support any law that will lead to the evacuation of settlers from occupied territories," says Dehamshe.

The big question is how long the present Knesset will manage to hold out. MKs from the right and left, religious and secular, Jews and Arabs, all agree that the government will not complete its term (which ends in October 2006) and that elections for the 17th Knesset will be held during 2005 - barring any unexpected developments; for example, a decision by the prime minister to back down from the disengagement plan, his willingness to hold a referendum on the disengagement issue, or Labor's joining the crumbling coalition.

Coalition whip MK Gideon Sa'ar, who, since the departure of the National Union and former cabinet ministers Effi Eitam and Yitzhak Levy (NRP) from the coalition, has managed to prevent coalition failures in all Knesset votes despite the coalition's trimmed complement of a maximum of 58 MKs, admits that the government's ability to continue handling the affairs of the state until 2006 is questionable.

This doubt stems from the anticipated political fallout from the approval of the disengagement plan and the possible departure of the NRP from the coalition. This could cause the coalition to lose its majority in the Knesset, thus precipitating early elections.

Likud sources believe that Sharon is not interested in early elections, but that his government will not be able to hang on with a coalition of 55 MKs (assuming that the NRP leaves and the coalition will consist of just the Likud and Shinui). In such a case, Sharon will probably initiate early elections himself, in order not to fall prey to a vote of no confidence over the approval of the state budget or a vote on a bill to dissolve the Knesset.

Before or after the disengagement

MK Ofir Pines-Paz, head of the Labor's response team, estimates that Sharon will initiate the process for early elections before the implementation of the disengagement plan, with the view of winning another term as prime minister. "I truly hope that no one in the Labor Party will try to creep into the government again," he says.

MK Aryeh Eldad (National Union), firmly believes elections will be held in May 2005. "The situation in which Sharon has put the country cannot be solved without elections - unless Sharon agrees to a referendum," Eldad says. "I think he will want to hold elections when the disengagement is already a fait accompli."

"I have no doubt that the winter session will put an end to the Sharon government and herald a new era," says Dehamshe confidently. "This government has run its course and Sharon cannot go on running matters without a majority in the Knesset."

Cohen (Shas) and United Torah Judaism's Israel Eichler also concurs. "Sharon cannot make any dramatic diplomatic moves because he does not have a majority in the Knesset," Eichler says. "I sincerely hope that this government will fall during the winter session, considering all the economic decrees and exploitation of weaker sectors."

Even within the coalition there are predictions that Sharon's government will not overcome all the hurdles in its path.

"I figure elections will be held even before summer 2005," says Brizon, "because the coalition wagon is stuck in the mud. Anyone who looks closely can't help but see that the government is deeply mired both diplomatically and economically. Sharon has troubles from within and without, so it is hard to see how he will extricate the wagon."

Yahalom believes that only Sharon's willingness to hold a referendum on the disengagement or the addition of Labor to the coalition can prevent early elections. "In any other situation, the government will not be able to hang on," says Yahalom, "because after the disengagement plan passes its third reading, the NRP will leave the coalition, and then Sharon will have the support of just 55 MKs and will have difficulty functioning."

Only Gal-On feels that it is still too early to eulogize the Sharon government.

"Sharon is a political fox," Gal-On says, "and I don't believe he will initiate early elections because then he would be taking risks. Even among Likud faction members I do not see anyone with an interest in bringing the elections forward. Some of the new MKs know that new elections would leave them out of the Knesset. So why should they run to the polls?

Shinui is also not enthusiastic about elections so soon after the crises it suffered in the Paritzky and Poraz affairs. The NRP doesn't want new elections either; so I think that if the elections are brought forward, it will not be before November 2005."

	Likud ministers voting on a no-confidence motion in July. The winter session will be "fateful."
	Photo by: Lior Mizrahi / BauBa