Palestinian leaders, Arab and European countries have voiced their concern over the probable victory of Likud leader Ariel Sharon in the Israeli prime ministerial elections underway Tuesday.
Polls have throughout the election campaign shown Sharon way ahead of caretaker Prime Minister Ehud Barak.
Palestinian minister of planning and international cooperation Nabil Shaath told Reuters that the hawkish Israeli leader “might plunge the Middle East into turmoil.”
However, Shaath and other Palestinian officials agreed they would have to deal with Sharon if he beat Barak, as opinion polls predict. "There is an anxiety among the Palestinian people and the Palestinian leadership, given the man's history," Shaath said.
Other Palestinian leaders showed a more hardline position.
"Continuing the Intifada is the only way to deal with Sharon, and looking to negotiate with him would be worthless," said Marwan Barghouthi, the head of the West Bank branch of the PLO mainstream movement, Fateh, and a key organizer of the four-month uprising.
"Sharon is the last bullet the Israelis have; let them fire it," he told AFP.
Palestinian information minister Yasser Abed Rabbo had equally harsh words for Sharon, who is expected to crush Barak in the election.
"There is no danger like the danger of Sharon, and all eyes have to be wide open to this; the peace front must be enlarged to confront this," Abed Rabbo had said.
The minister had implicitly urged 1984 Palestinians to vote for Barak, a call refused by the Israeli Arabs who have said they would never vote for the man who killed 13 of their sons early October during protests in support for the Intifada.
At the Arab level, there has been apprehension about a Sharon victory because of his hard-line views on the Middle East peace process and past anti-Arab actions, said Haaretz.
As defense minister, Sharon engineered Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Israeli troops in west Beirut let an allied Christian militia group into two Palestinian refugee camps, where they systematically slaughtered hundreds of people. An Israeli commission later found Sharon indirectly responsible, costing him his job as defense minister.
Syria said that a victory for Sharon would herald a new ominous era that threatens the Mideast peace process.
Israeli voters will choose Tuesday the worst prime minister they have ever chosen, said the ruling Baath party newspaper Al-Baath, cited by Haaretz.
“On the basis of Sharon's criminal past and his extreme orientations, he would herald a new ominous era that threatens the peace process with dire consequences, as his return to the political platform means unequivocally that Israel is preparing itself for an anti-peace alternative and is heading toward more bloody violence in all the region,” added the paper.
Tishrin, another government daily, said any talk now about peace is a waste of time while state-run Al-Thawra newspaper said Sharon's record is full of racism, hatred and grudge.
In other Arab reactions, Lebanon's Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri was quoted as saying in Tokyo on Tuesday that Sharon's history suggests that the peace process will have a setback.
In Jordan, a former official and a peace negotiator told the English daily, Jordan Times, that “Sharon started out on the wrong foot with Arabs everywhere, including in Jordan, by threatening everyone left, right and center.”
“He's the antithesis of peace.”
And that was only since he started his recent elections campaign, the ex-official said.
The paper reminded its readers of Sharon’s bloodstained history. In addition to the invasion of Lebanon and the Sabra and Shatilla massacres in the country, Sharon was in the spotlight in the aftermath of the attempt on the life of a prominent Hamas leader in Amman.
“In more recent years, he provoked Jordanian rancor in the aftermath of the Mishaal affair, when, under the aegis of then-Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu the Israeli Mossad botched an assassination attempt of Hamas politburo chief Khalid Mishaal. After the furor, he said on Israeli television that Israel had informed Jordan of its intention to “finish off the job” of killing Mishaal, only not on Jordanian territory,” said the Jordan Times Report.
It added that “a week ago, he raised hackles in Amman when he told an Israeli daily newspaper that “there is a risk of Yasser Arafat toppling the Hashemite regime in Jordan and establishing a Palestinian state” — a statement interpreted here as one intended to create dissension between Jordan and the Palestinians.”
There have been scores of reports in the different Arab media warning of the hawkish rightist leader’s expecting return to decision making.
Meanwhile, Danish Foreign Minister Mogens Lykketoft was quoted by AFP as saying that Sharon’s victory would be "deeply deplorable."
"It would be deeply deplorable if, as everything seems to indicate, Ariel Sharon were to emerge as the victor in the Israeli elections," Lykketoft told a morning show of the TV2 television channel.
"We don't know how long Sharon will stay in power, if he is elected. But the prospects seem very gloomy because the whole apparently insoluble and very unhappy Israeli-Palestinian conflict is paralyzed precisely because of Israel's settlement policy."
Sharon has said he will resist Palestinian demands for the removal of any Israeli settlers from the territories occupied by Israel in 1967, a major sticking point in any peace settlement, said the agency.
Lykketoft said he believed that the European Union could continue to push for a peace agreement, in tandem with the Americans, despite the expected right-wing victory.
Such efforts should go on "in spite of that man, of his past and his policies," he added, referring to Sharon – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
