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Israel's Peres quits Labor Party to back Sharon
(AP)
Updated: 2005-12-01 08:42
Bitter over his ouster as Labor Party chief, Shimon Peres quit his political
home of six decades Wednesday to campaign for Ariel Sharon's new party, saying
the prime minister is the best choice to lead Israel to peace with the
Palestinians.
Peres' defection was an important coup for Sharon in the scramble by the
major parties to recruit high-profile supporters during a political realignment
the past three weeks as the country prepares for parliamentary elections in
March.
Many Israelis respect Peres, an 82-year-old former prime minister, as an
elder statesman and peacemaker, but they remain wary of his dovish politics.
His resignation from Labor could contribute to the view that he is a
political opportunist. Peres also brings with him a reputation as a perennial
loser at the polls who led Labor to five electoral defeats and lost a race this
month to lead the party into a sixth election.
"This has not been an easy decision for me, but I found myself faced with the
contradiction between the party of which I am a member and the requirements of
the political situation," Peres said. "Without ignoring the deep connection that
I have to the party's historical path and its members, I must prefer the more
urgent and greater consideration ... My party activity has come to an end."
Veteran Israeli statesman Shimon Peres addresses the media
during a news conference in his office in Tel Aviv November 30,
2005.[Reuters] | Under a reported deal worked out
with the prime minister, Peres will support Kadima, the centrist party Sharon
formed last week after leaving the hard-line Likud, but he will not officially
join the party and he will not run for a seat in parliament, where he has served
since 1959.
In return, Sharon åK½ï¿½ if re-elected åK½ï¿½ will give Peres a senior post in his next
government, possibly putting him in charge of peace talks with the Palestinians
and neighboring Arab states.
His voice shaking with emotion, Peres said the decision to leave Labor was
not easy, but he believed Sharon was best suited to pursue a peace deal with the
Palestinians.
"I am convinced that he is determined, as I am, to continue with the peace
process and restart it immediately after the elections," he said. "I decided,
therefore, to support his election and cooperate with him to realize these
goals."
Peres' critics said he was more concerned with remaining at the center of
Israeli politics than with ending the Mideast conflict.
"You can present everything as a principle ... The peace process is
important, but more important is: 'Where do I stand with the peace process? Is
peace being done without me?'" said Shlomo Ben-Ami, a former Labor foreign
minister.
Despite their differences, Peres and Sharon forged a friendship over the
decades that they turned into a political partnership as Sharon fought attempts
by Likud hard-liners to torpedo his Gaza withdrawal plan. Sharon has said Israel
would have to leave parts of the West Bank åK½ï¿½ while maintaining major settlement
blocs åK½ï¿½ in any final peace deal with the Palestinians.
Yossi Beilin, a former Peres ally who now leads the dovish Yahad Party, said
Sharon has never given Peres much authority in past alliances and he doubted
Sharon was interested in pursuing a real peace deal with the Palestinians.
"In my view, joining Sharon for the peace camp, for anybody from the peace
camp, is a big, big, big mistake," he said.
Peres has been a major figure in Israel since the country's creation in 1948,
when he was a young aide to founding Prime Minister David Ben Gurion. He helped
create the framework for the Israeli army, developed Israel's nuclear capacity
in the 1950s and was a key player in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process in
the 1990s.
"He's been in politics ever since Truman threw the bomb on Hiroshima,"
Ben-Ami told The Associated Press.
Peres is feted abroad as a statesman, and shared the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize
with Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
But at home, he is renowned for his multiple electoral defeats. He served
three brief stints as prime minister, twice replacing Rabin and once as part of
a rotation agreement with a hard-line rival after a deadlocked election.
He also lost a parliamentary vote for the country's ceremonial presidency, an
office that would have given him a dignified exit from politics.
In another shocking defeat, this month Peres lost the Labor Party primary to
union leader Amir Peretz, who immediately began working to rejuvenate the party,
recruiting academics, a prominent journalist and a reclusive millionaire to join
its parliamentary slate. Peretz's moves appear to be working, according to a
series of favorable polls.
Peres was insulted when Peretz refused to guarantee him the second slot on
Labor's parliamentary list. After Sharon quit Likud last week and formed the
Kadima, Peres began talks to leave Labor.
The defection could damage the party by persuading older Labor supporters of
European origin, already wary of Peretz's Middle Eastern ethnicity and his union
roots, to vote for Sharon, Ben-Ami said.
Peres has jumped ship before. In 2000, rebuffed by then-Prime Minister Ehud
Barak in his attempt to recapture the Labor Party nomination, Peres approached
the dovish Meretz Party and offered to run as its candidate. Meretz refused. And
in 1965, Peres briefly followed Ben Gurion into a new party called Rafi, which
was later folded into Labor.
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