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But OutAriel Sharon demonstrates how to look like you're saying yes when you're really saying no.

By William SaletanPosted Thursday, May 16, 2002, at 6:34 PM ET

Ariel Sharon Your boss asks you to work the weekend. Your friend asks to crash at your place. Your college asks you for money. Should you say yes? Maybe. Should you say no? Never. There's always a way to brush off a request or obligation without quite saying so. Just ask Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

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Sharon lives in a neighborhood where ducking your duty by shading your words is an art form. His enemy, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, has made a political career of disavowing terrorism while extolling and financing "martyrdom." Sharon's rival, former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, slithered out of the Oslo land-for-peace accords by claiming that Israel didn't have to give up land since the persistence of rogue terrorists meant that Arafat wasn't providing peace.

Now it's Sharon's turn. He's under heavy international pressure to do what Netanyahu wouldn't do: negotiate a final peace pact with Arafat's Palestinian Authority. In that pact, he's expected to sign over the Gaza Strip and virtually all of the West Bank to a Palestinian state. But Sharon loathes Arafat. He doesn't want to deal with the Palestinian Authority. He doesn't want to give up territory. He certainly doesn't want a fully armed Palestinian state next door.

How does Sharon get out of this bind? By redefining the terms of Israel's commitment. Yes, he'll allow a Palestinian state, but not one with all the powers a state normally has. Yes, he'll negotiate with the Palestinian Authority, but not this Palestinian Authority. Yes, he'll sign a permanent agreement defining Israeli-Palestinian borders, but not until after a long, indefinite period of Palestinian obedience to a limited "interim" agreement.

This week, the Central Committee of Israel's Likud Party, to which Sharon and Netanyahu belong, passed a resolution declaring, "No Palestinian state will be established west of the Jordan River." Netanyahu promoted the resolution; Sharon opposed it. The consensus among pundits is that the resolution won't cripple Sharon because the Central Committee has no more control over Sharon than the Republican platform committee has over President Bush. But in fact, the resolution helps Sharon by creating a false appearance of division between him and Israeli hard-liners. What the hard-liners imply with a "no," Sharon implies with a "yes, but."

Start with the question of a Palestinian state. Netanyahu promoted the no-state resolution by arguing that some of the traditional powers of statehood, such as importing weapons and controlling airspace, would imperil Israel. "Just say no to a Palestinian state!" he told the Likud delegates. A decade ago, Sharon shared that view. As prime minister, however, he has turned the argument around. The Palestinians can have a state, he says, as long as it doesn't include an army or control of its airspace and borders. This is like telling your boss, "Sure, I can work the weekend—as long as it doesn't include Saturday or Sunday."

Should Israel negotiate with the Palestinian Authority? Netanyahu says no. "We must immediately dismantle the Palestinian Authority," he wrote last month in the Los Angeles Times. Sharon disagrees. "I have no intention of dismantling the Palestinian Authority," he said recently. On Tuesday, he told Israel's parliament, "Israel wants to enter into peace negotiations and will do so as soon as two basic terms for the establishment of a genuine peace process are met." One condition was an end to terrorism; the other was reform of the Palestinian Authority. "It must be a different Authority!" Sharon told Israeli legislators. This is like telling your friend, "Sure, you can stay at my place—when you're Anna Kournikova." (One Israeli lawmaker quipped that Sharon's next demand would be to "replace the Palestinian people.")

When will Israel finalize a deal with the Palestinians? Never, says Netanyahu. "It is clear now that we cannot reach any kind of solution at all with the Palestinians," he told the Likud committee. Sharon rejects such pessimism. He's willing to complete negotiations with the Palestinians; he's just not willing to say when. On Tuesday, he told the Israeli parliament that he would "sign a peace agreement" with the Palestinians only after "a lengthy intermediate stage."

How lengthy? According to the New York Times, "Mr. Sharon has indicated privately that the interim period of calm he seeks could last 10 years or more." Publicly, Sharon refuses to put any explicit limit on the "interim" stage. When asked last week what reforms the Palestinian Authority would have to complete before Sharon would consider approving Palestinian statehood, Sharon said it was "premature" even to broach that question. This is like telling your college, "Sure, I'll give you money—some day."

Palestinian officials have pounced on the Likud resolution, imagining that it will drive a wedge between Sharon and Bush. Saeb Erekat, one of Arafat's top negotiators, called the Likud vote "an eye-opener for President Bush," arguing that it "unmasked" Sharon's resolve to maintain the Israeli occupation rather than pursue peace. Erekat has it backward. The media have interpreted the resolution as a slap at both Bush and Sharon, thereby uniting them in apparent opposition to Netanyahu and the Israeli right.

Hawks often ridicule the platitudes of diplomacy. The enemy talks peace, they say, but he wages war. Sharon is simply reversing this tactic (as Frame Game said he could). Sharon has "reaffirmed to me that he remains committed to moving forward to achieve that vision that I think most people have of a Palestinian state" at "some point in the future," U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters after the Likud vote. Sure. Whatever that means.

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William Saletan is Slate's national correspondent and author of Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War.

Photograph of Ariel Sharon by Nir Elias/Reuters.

COMMENTS

Reader Comments From The Fray:

Sharon's tactics are pretty much those I would expect from any Israeli leader faced with the choice he faces now. Indeed, most governments elect to stall when pressured to either enter a negotiation that promises to take them where they do not wish to go or reject negotiations, thereby incurring the displeasure of other governments. Sharon's agenda--what he hopes to gain by stalling--is pretty clear. How should the United States respond to it?

Not by ganging up with the Arab states on the Israelis to make negotiated concessions to the Palestinians, that's for sure. Israel is a democracy, and most Israelis back Sharon's current tactics while loathing the idea of following a largely successful military action with negotiated concessions to the Palestinian leadership, as if nothing had happened in the last nine months. Moreover the Bush administration would probably not be able to withstand the pressure from Israel's American supporters to tilt toward Israel once talks began.

The United States will not be able to move Israel without separating the things most Israelis approve of in Sharon--striking terrorists and standing up to Arafat--from the things they question. First among these are the settlements in Gaza and much of the West Bank. Sharon is committed to keeping and expanding them, many if not most Israelis are not, and settlements clearly serve no American interest. It therefore seems more promising to discuss this key issue with Israel outside the context of negotiations with Arafat, with a view toward pressuring Israel to start abandoning settlements unilaterally.

Of course this approach would require a degree of intestinal fortitude from the Bush administration, with respect to both domestic political pressures and to pressure from Arab governments now anxious to cool down the Israeli-Palestinian situation immediately. I have my doubts that this requirement can be met. But if it can, the odds seem better for rallying Israelis to support a tactical withdrawal proposed by the United States as a means of enhancing Israeli security than for getting a popular Israeli government to bestow concessions on an adversary nearly all Israelis neither respect or trust.

--Zathras

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