A country held captive

by Yoel Marcus

20 September 2002

It's very sad, this Mitzna business with the empty chairs, and now the illegal donations. Because it proves that not only is there no room in the political arena for people with good intentions, but also for people who think differently. Our democracy has been commandeered by one man.

We are not talking about a dictator who has taken over the country by military force. On the contrary. We are talking about a nice man, a white-haired grandpa with a little paunch and a pleasant manner. A man with a sense of humor, and most importantly, a crowd-pleaser. He was elected by the largest number of votes ever cast for a politician in Israel. But within a year and half of taking office, he has established an autocracy, a government of one.

Sharon reserves more powers for himself than any prime minister we know of in the democratic world today. In practice, he is not only the prime minister, but also the defense minister and the commander in chief of the army. The generals, once famous for their brainstorming, now speak in one voice: the voice of Sharon.

The Shin Bet and the Mossad take orders from him, and now he's appointed a Mossad chief after his own heart, a comrade-in-arms and a Likudnik to boot. Sharon also controls, among others, the Israel Lands Administration, the Israel Broadcasting Authority and Channel Two, headed by a loyal director-general from Ofra. He keeps tabs on relations with the United States via his personal chum, Aryeh Genger. He neutralized the national security adviser appointed in the wake of one of the more important recommendations of the Agranat Commission. The commission felt that multiple viewpoints would prevent a repetition of the kind of fixed "conception" that was father and mother to the fiasco of the Yom Kippur War. Now there is only one conception: Sharon's.

The leader of the only democracy in the Middle East is like Henry Ford senior, who told his managers they could paint the cars any color they wanted as long as it was black.

The surest way to become an autocrat without a military coup is to put together a government with a broad parliamentary base that will leave the opposition powerless. Meretz, for example, has submitted 68 no-confidence proposals against Sharon, but who ever heard about it? The bigger the government, the more it looks like a train station, full of people rushing around with cell-phones. Forget about life or death decisions. All too often, we hear excuses like "no one told me," "I didn't know," "I wasn't there." Or: "We decided in principle, but we didn't know it was a one-ton bomb. We didn't know they were going to kill the wife, too."

Sometimes a round of telephone calls is made at night, when the army is already rolling and the ministers are too sleepy to know exactly what they're approving. Sharon has been a pro at wrapping governments around his little finger since Lebanon. He keeps saying he has a "detailed plan," but the government doesn't have a clue what it is. No political-strategic debate has ever been held.

Yossi Sarid says that Sharon has two collaborators: Arafat and the Labor Party. He's made both of them irrelevant. The Labor Party partnership is pathetic. Whatever Labor least believes in, it supports. Not once has Peres banged on the table and said "That's it. We're leaving." For Fuad, the defense portfolio is like a pot of gold falling out of the blue, and he's hanging on tight. He talks about peace and initiatives, but in practice he does Sharon's bidding.

With all the rest of his partners, Sharon's life is just as easy. It's a dictator's dream come true: a government with no opposition, with no system of checks and balances, with that "quiet please, we're shooting" ambience.

With Mr. Peace and Security at the helm, there have been more terrorist attacks than in the days of any previous prime minister, and the economy is sliding downhill. But Sharon casts a giant shadow over all his competitors. He is a beloved man, a man to be trusted. With his secret plan that offers the Palestinians nothing aside from mutual violence, with an apathetic public that offers not a murmur of protest, with the herd mentality of the media and the moneyed, we have become an autocracy, a regime that offers no alternative - even without a putsch.