JERUSALEM — As the deadline draws ever closer for Prime Minister-elect Ehud Barak to present his government for Knesset approval, his coalition negotiations are taking some surprising turns.
In the latest twist, Barak has resumed talks with a potential partner that for several weeks now has appeared destined to be left out in the political cold — the Likud Party.
In a surprise move, Barak held a series of private discussions this week with Likud’s acting chairman, outgoing Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon, who was Barak’s army mentor years ago.
The talks with Sharon came after Barak — who has until July 8 to present his government to the Knesset — encountered trouble wooing the fervently Orthodox Shas Party into the government he is forming. One sticking point was Shas’ demand to receive the interior ministry, something Barak has said is impossible.
Without the knowledge of his own negotiating team, Barak headed Monday night straight from Shas to Sharon. The two talked late into the night, and the next day their lieutenants reopened the long-stalled formal negotiations between their two parties.
Sharon was expected to ask the party’s central committee to consider joining the coalition. Sharon, who is likely to become finance minister in the coalition, told reporters Tuesday that he believed there could be “real partnership” in policymaking between Barak and himself.
But other Likud figures were more circumspect, and outside observers cautioned against any premature conclusion that a deal was in the offing.
Officials with the leftist Meretz Party, previously signaling that they were ready to sign a coalition agreement with Barak, are now pulling back, not wishing to be a “fifth wheel” — as party leader Yossi Sarid put it — in a Barak government that includes Sharon.
The other four wheels would “all be pulling in different directions,” Sarid added sourly.
Barak reportedly intends to retain the defense portfolio for himself and has offered the foreign ministry to Gesher’s David Levy.
What was Barak’s sudden change all about? Why, after close to a month of silence between them, are Barak’s One Israel bloc and the Likud talking again?
Why, specifically, is Barak wooing Sharon?
Barak’s pledge after the May 17 election to be “everyone’s prime minister” still resounds, at least in his own ears. He genuinely wants the broadest-based government possible, believing that given the dimensions of his own victory in the race for prime minister, his voice in all matters of high policy will not effectively be challenged.
And on the issues of peace policy, Barak believes a broad-based government will make the best deals with Syria and the Palestinians and will carry any agreements easily through the national referendums he has promised to hold before each of those treaties is ratified.
But what of Sharon? What does he hope to gain?
In Sarid’s mind, at any rate, Sharon’s intentions can only spell mischief.
For One Israel peaceniks, too, Sharon’s participation in the government spells ongoing attempts to undermine, derail or at least slow the peace process.
But there may be another reading, and, if the One Israel-Likud talks move forward positively, Barak will be trying to persuade his key supporters that it is tenable — despite Sharon’s long record as a hard-liner and an opponent of the Oslo peace process.
Sharon, by this theory, has come to terms with Barak’s victory. The course of the coalition negotiations, though slow and stuttering, is leading inexorably to the creation of a government committed to bringing Oslo to full fruition and to signing a land-for-peace deal with the Syrians that would include an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights.
All this being the case, Sharon’s position now is that it is better for Likud to be in the government — where it can affect policymaking as much as it can — rather than watch, impotent and frustrated, from the sidelines.
The third alternative, toppling Barak, simply does not exist and will not be available during the next crucial year or two.
Cynics within and outside Likud will link this pragmatic attitude on the part of Sharon to his candidacy in the Likud leadership primaries, due to be held in the fall.
As a senior minister in the new government, Sharon would undoubtedly have the advantage over his main rival, Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert.
This is especially the case in view of Olmert’s central campaign theme: that he is the party’s moderate candidate for the future while Sharon is the unreconstructed hard-liner.
But such internal party considerations aside, Sharon may well want to make a contribution during the process of shaping the final borders of the state.
At 71, and with a long trail of controversy behind him, Sharon, similar to Moshe Dayan a generation ago, may want to end his career as a peacemaker.
A seat in the Barak Cabinet, he may feel, is the only practical way to achieve that.
But can Sharon bring the rest of his much-reduced party along with him, if this is indeed his frame of mind as the talks with Barak resume?
Can Barak, for his part, quiet the mounting concerns and doubts among his own doves?
The coming two weeks will provide the answers to these intriguing questions.