Labor, it turns out, is not the only party to boast a dynamic, Sephardi, ex-mayor of a disadvantaged city, in his mid-50s, with dovish views on peacemaking with the Palestinians, who wants to be prime minister. The Likud, until recently, had one too in Moroccan-born ex-Yavneh mayor Meir Sheetrit. Now, he's batting for Kadima.
During a lengthy interview with The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday, we questioned Sheetrit at length on his work and plans as transportation minister - material that will appear in our pages next week. But we talked politics, too.
Sheetrit, energetic and the fastest speaker I've ever interviewed, said he considers the establishment of Kadima, and its strong showing in current voter surveys, to be a vindication of the dovish mind-set he'd previously championed in what he claims used to be a more tolerant and diverse Likud.
That mind-set, he made plain, eschews further unilateral withdrawals in the West Bank, but opposes further Jewish settlement there - highlighting the Galilee and Negev, instead, as the places to fulfill the Zionist dream of tomorrow and safeguard Israel. Strikingly, he asserted firmly that Ehud Barak was responsible for the failure of the Camp David talks five years ago, and that Yasser Arafat was a viable peace partner.
Reading over his comments, I realize how much I badgered him about his thinking on the territories, the merits of unilateralism, Palestinian intentions and so on, returning to some issues several times. He was unfailingly courteous as I persisted in seeking to understand his arguments. It will be interesting, I think, to reread the exchanges below in a few months from now, particularly if the polls prove more accurate than usual, Sharon is reelected and Sheetrit, as he says he has been promised, is given a prominent cabinet position in a government that reflects his thinking and acts upon it.
What determined your move from the Likud to Kadima? You'd worked with Bibi as a minister at the Treasury...
I worked very closely with Bibi. I see the economic aspects the way he does. I believe in a free market, competition, in an efficient economy. But I have absolute differences on the diplomatic front with him. I've never hidden my views. I'm the only Likud Knesset member who supported the Oslo accords. And I was still elected by the Likud.
I think this country must reach peace. I don't want to risk a binational state. I want a Jewish state - democratic, with a clear Jewish majority, and no danger that tomorrow there'll be a different majority. That's why we established this state. And if I want that kind of state I have no choice but to leave most of the territories and let the Palestinians establish a state next to us. My only condition: that there should be complete peace, that they should eliminate terror.
There's no way that this [two-state vision] can happen with the Likud of today, to my great sorrow. I've been in the Likud for 33 years, a Knesset member for 24 years. Until today, the Likud behaved differently. Nobody dreamed that Begin would leave Sinai. But he made peace with Egypt and we left the Sinai, dismantled all the settlements there. And look, thank God, there's been quiet there for almost 30 years and no soldier is getting killed on the Egyptian border. When Rabin made peace with Jordan, the Likud supported the agreement. Now with the Palestinians, the last bone in our throat, we have to reach an accord. Not at any price. My starting point is that the Palestinians must, as a condition for progress, eliminate terror. There won't be further unilateral withdrawals. Only negotiation.
And if they don't eliminate terror?
Then there's no progress.
But then you risk that Jewish, democratic majority?
No. We're building a security barrier, along the entire West Bank. And that's enabling us to neutralize the strategic weapon that they've been using against us.
Until they develop something else?
The key strategic weapon is suicide bombers and we're preventing most of them from hitting us in our soft underbelly. That's the only real threat they have. No other weapon is effective. They fire missiles? We can fire hundreds as many. Look at what happened in Gaza. They tried. And quickly capitulated, because they realized the consequences. We're not impotent, we're not afraid of the Palestinians. But we don't want to rule over them. The opposite. We want to get out of there. And in my opinion they understand this. And they understand that there's no going back to the 1967 borders, and that we're not going to uproot 200,000 [Jewish] residents of the West Bank.
Aren't we encouraging them, for now, to focus terrorism on settlements to the east of the barrier, to force us back to the barrier, for this phase?
They tried that. It didn't work. I'm demanding that they eliminate terror. If they don't, it will only hurt them. The intifada hurt us badly; it hurt them even worse.
Maybe they don't care?
So I don't care either.
We left Gaza, and there's not a Palestinian alive who thinks we left for any reason other than what they call "resistance" and we call terrorism. And now you say we want a democratic state with a Jewish majority, and that we need to leave most of the territories, and we've built a barrier, but there won't be further unilateral withdrawals. That doesn't make sense.
We left Gaza to prove that we're serious. We proved it. All the threats of missiles on Ashkelon and Tel Aviv proved baseless. They're not falling. Finished.
There's an area east of the barrier with an overwhelming Palestinian majority...
Yes, and we don't rule over that population. We left. It's in the hands of the Palestinians. Perhaps 5 percent of the Palestinians are in Israeli-held territory.
Most of the territory is in our hands.
Precisely. That's the idea. So they can't do anything. And they understand that too. And they want to get a state.
You can foresee a situation where for years, if they don't tackle terrorism, we won't pull back to the barrier unilaterally?
