On the other hand two recent articles that Netanyahu didn't jump; rather he was pushed. First there's "Bibi as Bad Guy - as usual" by Yossi Verter:

When Olmert was asked about "the day after" the disengagement - a term that has already become an onerous cliche - he provided a headline that for some reason did not get the attention it deserved.

"After the disengagement," he declared, "we will turn our attention to dealing with the social issue. I travel around the country," Olmert revealed to his interviewers, "and I meet mayors who don't talk to me at all about the disengagement, but only about the distress in their cities, about the gaps, the poverty and the hunger."

In a certain villa in Caesarea, where Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sarah reside on the weekends, the red warning lights suddenly went on. When Olmert declares so publicly and determinedly that the Sharon government's next agenda will be "social," only someone who is chronically naive will not wonder about the political implications. The finance minister is not naive. He is even suspicious at times and most certainly asked himself on Friday night whether once again Olmert is the bird who is the portent of spring, as he was in the disengagement scheme [Olmert, it must be recalled, set out the principles of the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and isolated settlements in the West Bank before Sharon did - Y.V.], and whether this pair, Sharon et Olmert, are preparing a social intifada for him in advance of the discussions of the 2006 budget.

Early signs that back up this assessment/suspicion at the Finance Minister's bureau have already appeared during the past weeks: After all, it was Sharon himself who confided to television personality Eli Yatzpan that the treasury's policy is merciless and heartless. A source close to Sharon was asked about a week ago what the prime minister will be busy with after the pullout, and the reply was swift: "personal security, social welfare and the bringing of hearts closer together."

Caroline Glick demonstrates that Netanyahu, by resigning cut himself off from a valuable platform:

As a regular member of Knesset, Netanyahu today doesn't even have the ability to gain a leadership position in the parliament. All the senior committees have chairmen who will not budge. Even receiving membership in the powerful and prestigious finance or foreign affairs and defense committee will be difficult. Aside from this, he will have a reduced personal staff and thus a limited ability to reach out to party members to whom, anyway, he will no longer have any favors to offer in exchange for their support in the party. The same is the case for the remaining Likud ministers in the government. Danny Naveh, Yisrael Katz, Tzahi Hanegbi, Silvan Shalom and Limor Livnat have nothing personal to gain from supporting Netanyahu. And the same is the case with the deputy ministers.

Sharon, for his part, has the media firmly in his court. In the wake of Netanyahu's surprise announcement, the chief anchors in the television studios wasted no time in sanctimoniously accusing Netanyahu of political opportunism. Whereas former prime minister Ehud Barak has no trouble getting long interviews on television and radio, it is hard to imagine that Netanyahu will receive anything other than a wall of silence from the media that will likely do everything it can to encourage the public to forget about him.

She feels that Bibi stayed in place as long as possible to see his economic reforms through.
I'm not changing my view that the resignation hurt him. Certainly Glick's article shows how hard it will be for him to get back.

Reneging
The Prime Minister promised not to give anything to the enemy. He's elected. He negotiates and makes concessions to an enemy?
Ariel Sharon 2003.
Or Yitzchak Rabin 1992.
Or Menachem Begin 1977.

In "Everything is Personal" Ofir Haivry writing for the editors of Azure examines this phenomenon in the latter two cases.

The first case happened in 1979, when Prime Minister Menachem Begin agreed to the Camp David accords, returning the entirety of the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in exchange for a peace treaty. Begin, more than anyone else, had built his political life on the belief that “not one inch” of land taken in the Six Day War should return to Arab hands. Camp David was no momentary loss of nerve or expedient compromise: Without warning, Begin adopted (and permanently enshrined) the idea of “land for peace” which he had so long abjured, and as a result “not one inch” remained in Israeli hands. He did not resign for betraying his voters. Nor did anyone ask him to. After a moment of shock, Begin’s own ideological peers accepted the fait accompli, and dutifully donned the emperor’s new clothes themselves.

Fourteen years later, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin did more or less the same thing. The leader identified with an iron-fist policy against Palestinian terror, who taught the West that the only way to defeat terrorism was by never negotiating with its perpetrators, suddenly and completely reversed himself, recognizing the PLO and negotiating what became the Oslo accords. Again, he was not sacked as Labor leader, nor did his government fall; he was praised as a hero by his party—a party which had relied heavily upon his hawkish repute in order to come to power in the first place.

And now it's happening with Ariel Sharon. Haivry's point isn't against any of these per se, but that there's a lack of accountability in Israeli politics. When Menachem Begin and Yitzchak Rabin changed course they didn't try and get legitimacy and go back to the people to ratify the changed policy:

At issue is not whether Camp David and Oslo were right or wrong, but what such monumental reversals do to the public’s faith in politics. After leaders as beloved as Begin and Rabin violated their sacred trust, how can anyone have faith in political ideas? How can a voting citizen ever again pin his hopes for the national future upon a strong, dynamic, content-driven leader? Twice fooled and still smarting, many Israelis are reluctant to walk down that road again.

This was written in the run up to the 1999 election and Haivry was decrying the lack of a platform that Netanyahu, Barak and Mordechai had in the campaign. The irony is that there was a very clear choice in the 2003 election. Pro or con unilateral withdrawal from Gaza.
The politiciam promising not to withdraw was elected. And he proceeded to change his worldview and never went back to the people to validate his change.
Haivry writes that the failure for politicians to be accountable has a corrosive effect on the politics of Israel.

I thought I'd posted before on the element of Israeli politics that baffles me, but I was unable to find it. In 57 years of existence Israel has been led for all but a little less than 5 years (1996 - 2001) by leaders of its first generation. (It is a little bit of a stretch to call PM Sharon of Israel's first generation, but he at least fought in the War of Independence.) Netanyahu and Barak, the two younger generation leaders, could hardly be said to have been great successes and it could be argued that they were only elected by the accident of direct elections. (It could be said that Netanyahu lost because of direct election too. When he lost in 1999, he was the issue.) In essence they were elected due to their ability to ignore the coalition building usually necessary to be successful in Israeli politics. But what is it in the nature of that coalition building that seemingly suppresses talent from developing.

Remembering
Going back to what I referred to yesterday .... Lewis Roth of Americans for Peace Now mentioned that "...it's important to recognize that Israel reaped tremendous diplomatic benefits from withdrawing from Lebanon."
What exactly were those benefits?
When the Palestinians started their so called "Aqsa intifada" Israeli ambassador to the UN, Yehuda Lancry wrote a letter to Secretary General Kofi Annan:

The events in these areas represent the latest and most severe developments in a wave of violence that has been building over the past few weeks. The attacks began with the throwing of stones and Molotov cocktails in the vicinity of the Netzarim Junction on 13 September. This was followed by the killing of an Israeli soldier by a roadside bomb on 27 September, and the murder of an Israeli police officer by a Palestinian policeman in a joint patrol on 29 September.

Note that Ambassador Lancry mentions that the increased violence against Israel started 2 weeks prior Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount. Did the UN say, you know we better look at how Arafat planned this violence in advance, after all we trust you since you withdrew from Lebanon. Well no. Resolution 1322 passed with the United States abstaining. And we all know how the UN responded to the cross border attack that same month in which Hezbollah kidnapped and killed 3 Israeli soldiers. The UN covered up for Hezbollah. I expect similar diplomatic gains for Israel accruing from their withdrawal from Gaza.
It's also important to remember, that though I disagree with the withdrawal, there are differences between Sharon and Mitzna. Two obvious things for example are that Sheikh Yassin and Dr. Rantisi would not have been killed in advance of a withdrawal had Mitzna been elected. (Or at least I doubt they would have.) I also have a hard time believing that Mitzna's government would have refused Dr. Rice's recent ridiculous request to re-arm the PA.
But it's important to remember one other thing that Sharon's disengagment plan was not greeted with any enthusiasm (from Krauthammer):

It is in this kind of atmosphere that Israel offers unilateral withdrawal from Gaza -- uprooting 7,000 Jews, turning over to the Palestinians 21 settlements with their extensive infrastructure intact and creating the first independent Palestinian territory in history -- and is almost universally attacked.

Moreover, and much overlooked, Israel will also evacuate four small West Bank settlements, which creates extensive Palestinian territorial contiguity throughout the northern half of the West Bank.

The Arabs have variously denounced this as Israeli unilateralism, a departure from the "road map" and a ruse and a plot. The craven Europeans have duly followed suit. And when Tony Blair defied the mob by expressing support for the plan, he was rewarded with a letter from 52 Arabist ex-diplomats denouncing him.

I.E. Sharon - much to the chagrin of the editors of the NY Times and Washington Post - is defining Israel's borders himself. He does not believe that Israel has a peace partner. While the Palestinians will claim victory for now at some point, if Sharon hasn't lost control of the situation, the withdrawals will stop and the Palestinians will complaing that Israel hasn't given them enough. This is a point made by Aluf Benn in the LA Times in "Why Sharon?":

Upon taking office as prime minister, Sharon feared an internationally imposed resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, one that would require Israeli withdrawal from east Jerusalem and virtually all of the West Bank. To preempt it, he avoided negotiations with Arafat, whom he viewed as a hopeless terrorist. To Sharon, peace talks equaled a "corral" leading Israel to the slaughterhouse.

When Mahmoud Abbas took the reins of the Palestinian Authority, following Arafat's death last November, Sharon praised his moderation but dismissed him as a peace partner. For Sharon, acting unilaterally leaves the initiative in Israel's hands and avoids the corral. He had also learned the lesson of his hapless predecessor, Ehud Barak, who withdrew Israeli forces from Lebanon but failed miserably at negotiations with Syria and Arafat. As long as Sharon refused to negotiate, he could avoid a similar failure.

So after an initial hesitation, Sharon launched the project of his lifetime, drawing Israel's border with the Palestinians in two segments — the security barrier in the West Bank (which leaves about 10% of the West Bank's land on its western, Israeli side) and the pre-1967 "green line" in Gaza.

Although Sharon still denies the territorial implication of the barrier route — it is not a border but a means of ensuring Israel safety, he says — it is clear to most Israelis (and everyone else) that what looks and behaves like a border will eventually become one, even though this implies the future evacuation of more Israeli settlements on its "other" side.

Needless to say Mitzna would be seeking Palestinian approval every step of the way. (The article would be better if Benn had left out much of that sneering Ha'aretz attitude early on.)

Of course, Sharon should still have gone to the voters.

Technorati tag Israel.

Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.