Why the Right must bolt By Ron Dermer (March 7) For nearly a year, Ariel Sharon enjoyed the highest approval rating of any prime minister in Israeli history. That popularity was a result of his ability to simultaneously cultivate the hopes of the Right and assuage the fears of the Left. Now that he is doing neither, his support is collapsing, and pressure is building on both the starboard and port sides of his national-unity ship. If the Right hopes to prevent another pyrrhic victory in the next elections, it must make sure that voter and pundit alike assign it responsibility for sinking the ship. The Right elected Sharon to restore security and jettison a political process that had brought calamity upon Israel. While the Right would have supported any candidate who ran against Ehud Barak, the fact that it could cast a ballot for the Israeli who best personified the Jewish State's life-long struggle against Arab terror only sweetened the trip to the voting booth. Throughout the past year - from the policy of restraint adopted after the Dolphinarium bombing to remarks about Palestinian statehood to a failure to oust Yasser Arafat after a post-September 11 wave of terror - Sharon presented the Right with ample evidence that he will not complete the mission on which Israelis sent him last February. Yet their hopes that the real "Arik" would eventually come out and fight constantly sprung anew. After an eagerly anticipated television address from Sharon that set a new standard for rhetorical ineptitude, the Right has started to come to its senses. The same logic that led many Israelis to conclude that Arafat must go - that either he cannot or will not crack down on terror - is now being applied by the Right to Sharon. As Jews are being slaughtered with abandon, the question of whether our prime minister is permanently shell-shocked by the war in Lebanon or whether the Prometheus of anti-terror is forever Peres-bound is no longer important. Along with an increasing number of Israelis of all political stripes, the Right believes that our army must finally decide to become one of the belligerents in the war being waged against us. The nature of a military campaign against terror is perhaps not as clear as the decisive majority of Israelis who support one. Nor is there a consensus on what is to be done after that campaign is completed, with opinion ranging from implementing an immediate unilateral withdrawal to the 1967 lines to transferring part of the Palestinian population and controlling the rest. But the majority of Israelis recognize that before the debate over tomorrow's "solutions" can begin, victory on the battlefield must be secured today. With a majority of his nation wanting "Arik" to fearlessly wage war, and with Sharon insisting that he will not lead them into that war, the gap between the mood of the public and the policies of the government is growing by the day. Yet foolishly, the Right continues to remain in a government that fails to advance its policies, risks eroding its electoral base and may ultimately undermine its democratic mandate. As Long as Avigdor Lieberman, Benny Elon and their hawkish Likud colleagues don't leave the government, Sharon will feel no pressure to meet their demands. Once outside the government, the pressure a mobilized Right will bring to bear on less courageous members of the national camp will convince them that dovish indecision will cost them their careers. Faced with the imminent demise of his government and watching the sands of his own political hourglass slip away, Sharon may wheel out the old "Arik" for one last encore. But if political rather than psychological constraints are holding "Arik" at bay, it is even more important for the Right to bolt. For continuing Sharon's current policy is a recipe for another missed electoral opportunity. The Left, which actually believes that there is no military solution to terror, is beginning to think that they can convince centrist voters to agree with them. Having successfully precluded the possibility of the Likud ever fighting a war against terror in this government, Labor will use Sharon's failure to restore security to "prove" that such a war cannot be won in the next one. Whether they can do this is still unclear, but once the Labor Party believes it can hold its own at the ballot box, it will bolt the government. And if they are the first to leave, the Right, which does not have the power to form a strong and stable government of its own in this Knesset, will be doubly harmed in the next election. Not only may Labor dupe a few voters with their bogus argument, but more important, the world will interpret the demise of Sharon's government as the Israeli people's rejection of his military approach and their support for a return to political negotiations. Because the next prime minister will not be directly elected, the ability to convince both our friends, who must respect the will of our democracy, and our enemies, who must fear that will, that Israel is prepared for war, will prove far more difficult. A small shift of a few seats to Labor and to the far-Right could leave a Likud prime minister coping with a shrunken party, wielding an unclear mandate, and facing emboldened enemies. Only by leaving the government today can the Israeli Right make the mandate of the next government crystal clear. By telling the world that Sharon lost power because he failed to wage war, the Right will only be empowering the next government to wage it. rdermer@jpost.co.il