A new low for democracy

by Evelyn Gordon
June 7, 2004 

With the cabinet's approval of his disengagement plan on Sunday, 
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon brought Israel's democracy to a 
new low.

It was troubling enough when he first proposed a unilateral 
withdrawal from Gaza, a mere year after having won the 
premiership by running against this idea. As Labor MK Yuli Tamir 
correctly observed (Haaretz, May 16), the Likud would almost 
certainly not have chosen him as its prime ministerial candidate 
had it known that this was his intention, and had the Likud 
not run him, he would not be prime minister today. Nor is it 
likely that Sharon would have won the general election on such 
a platform: Labor's Amram Mitzna did run on a pledge to evacuate 
Gaza unilaterally, and suffered the worst defeat in Israeli 
electoral history. 

Thus the proper thing to do would have been to go to the public 
with his new policy and ask for a new mandate - either through 
elections or through a national referendum. That, for instance, 
is what Charles de Gaulle did when he decided to abandon Algeria 
after having been elected on the slogan "Algerie francaise." 

Nevertheless, Sharon can hardly be accused of plumbing new depths 
by his failure to do so: In this, he merely followed in the 
shameful footsteps of Yitzhak Rabin ("I will not negotiate with 
the PLO") and Ehud Barak ("I will not divide Jerusalem"). 

Where Sharon did break new ground was in his behavior since 
the Likud referendum on May 2. Democratically speaking, 
Sharon was right to hold this referendum: Since it was the 
Likud's 200,000 members who originally chose him as their 
candidate, it was proper to ask them for a new mandate when 
he sought to reverse the platform on which they elected him. 
And for this reason, as Tamir perceptively noted, the oft-heard 
argument that this minority has no right to "dictate" to the 
majority is ridiculous: It was precisely this minority that 
made Sharon prime minister to begin with. 

Nevertheless, Sharon had no legal obligation to call a referendum, 
nor was he legally obliged to pledge, as he did at the Likud 
Central Committee meeting in March, that "the members' referendum 
will be binding on all representatives of the Likud, me above all. 
We are all representatives of the public. Acceptance of the 
democratic decision of the widest possible forum is the best 
way to safeguard the Likud's unity." 

Yet once he chose to do so - not out of any democratic principle, 
but in a successful bid to frighten wavering Likud ministers 
into supporting him - Sharon had no moral right to ignore the 
referendum's outcome. His only legitimate recourse at that point 
was to ask the public as a whole for a new mandate - which, 
incidentally, public opinion polls most certainly do not provide. 

Before the last election, polls also showed a majority of the 
public favoring unilateral withdrawal, yet the candidate who 
proposed that course of action was trounced by the candidate 
who opposed it. Similarly, when Sharon announced his plan, polls 
showed a large majority of Likud members supporting it - yet it 
was decisively defeated in the referendum. 

Instead, however, Sharon continued pushing his plan in the 
cabinet, declaring that insignificant cosmetic changes - such as 
altering the plan's title - were sufficient to comply with the 
referendum results. In so doing, he made a mockery of the 
referendum, his public pledge and, most importantly, 
the democratic process. 

True, democracy was equally ill-served by the weathervane behavior 
of its three most vocal self-declared supporters - Binyamin Netanyahu, 
Limor Livnat and Silvan Shalom, who voted for the plan after 
Sharon threw them the bone of a few additional insignificant 
changes. Yet Netanyahu's critique of Sharon's behavior is 
no less accurate for his failure to practice what he preaches: 
"The prime minister initiated the Likud referendum and obligated 
himself to accept the results. He didn't say that he would 
accept the results only if he won, and would throw them into 
the garbage if it turned out that he lost. What kind of message 
does this send to the public, when the government ignores the 
decision of its voters because the result is not to its liking?" 

Adding insult to injury was the invective that Sharon hurled at 
anyone who dared to argue that he ought to honor the referendum 
results: Accusing them of being motivated by narrow political 
interests - as if, since he himself lacks any vestige of 
democratic sensibility, no one else could possibly feel morally 
obligated by a democratic decision - and, even more outrageously, 
calling them "rebels," as if it were they, not he, who were 
flouting the party's will. As Likud MK Ayoub Kara trenchantly 
observed: "If we're rebels, then the Likud as a whole is rebel." 

Sharon has repeatedly argued that he has the right to ignore 
the referendum because "the public elected me to decide." 
Yet in fact, voters generally choose a prime minister because 
they approve of the policies he promises to pursue - not because 
they intend to install a dictator who will do whatever he 
pleases, even if it is the opposite of what he promised. 

If Sharon truly wants to implement his disengagement plan, 
he should ask the people for a mandate - either through elections 
or a national referendum. Otherwise, the Knesset must muster 
the courage to reject his contemptuous disregard for the 
democratic process. 

If neither of these things happen, it will deal a deadly blow 
to the public's already shaky faith in the political system 
and the value of democracy. After all, democracy is supposed 
to provide the public with a mechanism through which it can 
influence government policy. If it does not, what is the point 
of spending billions of shekels on elections every few years? 
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The writer is a veteran journalist and commentator.