[Mb-civic] NYTimes.com Article: Sharon Rebuffed by Party, as Arafat Admits Making Mistakes

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Sharon Rebuffed by Party, as Arafat Admits Making Mistakes

August 19, 2004
 By STEVEN ERLANGER 



 

RAMALLAH, West Bank, Aug. 18 - The leaders of Israel and
the Palestinians faced deep dissension in their
constituencies on Wednesday, with Yasir Arafat making a
rare admission of personal error to those seeking change,
and Ariel Sharon suffering a rebuff from his own party. 

Mr. Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, lost a nonbinding
vote in his Likud Party regarding his intention to expand
his coalition to carry out a unilateral withdrawal from the
Gaza Strip. His plan to withdraw from Gaza unilaterally and
to dismantle some Israeli settlements overturns Likud dogma
and has split the party. At its convention in Tel Aviv,
that idea of including the opposition Labor Party or other
parties in a new coalition government was rejected. 

Mr. Sharon, an intensely pragmatic politician, will move
forward without his party's clear support, his aides say,
but he will be weakened without it, having lost his
parliamentary majority, and he might be forced to call new
elections. 

In Ramallah, Mr. Arafat, the Palestinian president,
admitted in a rare, televised speech that he and his
Palestinian Authority had made serious mistakes. But
Palestinian legislators pressing for change said that his
comments were vague and unsatisfactory. 

Mr. Arafat tried to address the unrest in Gaza that has
produced one of the strongest challenges to his authority
since he returned from exile a decade ago. A younger
generation of Palestinians has denounced the chaos, lack of
security, overlapping institutions, administrative
corruption and long-postponed elections over which Mr.
Arafat has presided, trying to push him to put his personal
credibility behind serious changes. 

"We must show the courage to recognize our mistakes," he
said. "There is no one free from mistakes, from me on down.
Even the prophets made mistakes," he said. 

But in a speech of more than an hour, presented with vigor,
humor and occasional wit, Mr. Arafat deflected calls from
the audience, sitting in a large hall in his headquarters
here, for specific commitments to specific measures. 

In Tel Aviv, Mr. Sharon, in a pinstriped suit and blue tie,
spoke about the party's responsibility to the nation, and
to him, as its leader. "We must sound a different voice
from within the Likud, a stronger, much clearer one. A
national voice. A responsible voice," he said. 

But a vote by some 1,450 party leaders specifically to ban
a coalition with Labor won by more than 200 votes. Mr.
Sharon lost a compromise proposal, authorizing him to
negotiate a new coalition with any "Zionist party," by a
margin of only 19 votes, which might make it easier for him
to ignore it. 

He said he would move to expand his coalition by talking to
any party that believed in Israel, not ruling out religious
parties. Mr. Sharon is also holding talks with the
religious Shas party, the country's fourth-largest. Shas
represents ultra-Orthodox voters who largely share Likud's
views on security and whose leader, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, has
publicly placed the value of human life above the retention
of every inch of the biblical land of Israel. Shas could
represent an alternative to Labor, and could help Mr.
Sharon with Israeli settlers torn between their perceived
loyalties to religion and Israel. 

In May, Mr. Sharon suffered a similar embarrassing defeat
when Likud members voted against his Gaza disengagement
plan in a nonbinding referendum. But he seems now, as then,
determined to press ahead, even if it means reshaping
Likud. 

Back in Ramallah, a committee of Palestinian legislators
has prepared a list of decrees for Mr. Arafat to sign that
would accelerate changes and streamline the Palestinian
security forces, some of the legislators said today, but
they expressed doubt that Mr. Arafat would agree to sign. 

Mr. Arafat blamed Israel and its occupation of Palestinian
land for much of Palestinian troubles, but he said that the
occupation was not the whole cause. 

"We must not blame everything on the occupation," he said.
"What we can do, we shall do." 

Without naming names, he conceded, "Some mistakes have been
made by our institutions and some have abused their
positions and violated the trust placed in them," he said.
Then a dissident legislator, Abdul Jawad Saleh, interrupted
to say, "You are protecting them, Abu Amr," Mr. Arafat's
nom de guerre. Mr. Arafat answered, "I'm protecting them?"
And he warned Mr. Saleh to "stop sleeping" and twice to "be
careful." 

Mr. Arafat also admitted that "no real effort" had been
made to enforce law and order and said, "More efforts and
support should be made for the security of the people." 

Again without specifics, Mr. Arafat said, "We need to move
together to correct and reform all the mistakes." And he
said he fully supported the efforts of the prime minister,
Ahmed Qurei, whose resignation he rejected a few weeks ago.


The parliament speaker, Rawhi Fatouh, who introduced Mr.
Arafat, addressed him directly after his speech, saying:
"We need from you some formal decisions with your signature
about issues you raised in the speech. The most important
thing we need is your signature, and then we can start a
revolution of reform that you, Abu Amr, will be leading. It
will be called the presidential document for reform." 

Mr. Arafat did not respond. The last time he made a similar
confession of error was in mid-2002, when he called for new
elections and sweeping change, neither happened. 

Change-minded legislators like Mr. Saleh were disappointed.
"Arafat is not serious, or he would have been specific,''
he said. "The point is not to admit vague mistakes but to
be specific and then correct them." 

Nabil Shaath, the Palestinian foreign minister, said: "He
said all the right things about reform and democracy. But
people were waiting for more specifics." 

Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, a longtime Palestinian spokeswoman and
legislator, said: "It's a first step. Changing a political
system, with long-held and ingrained ways of thinking, is
not easy." 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/19/international/middleeast/19mideast.html?ex=1093938532&ei=1&en=87b530900b61c647


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