Sharon's leap

November 22, 2005

THE CHANCES for a just and lasting resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are better today than they have been for some time thanks to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's bold decision to leave the Likud Party and start a new centrist party to contest Knesset elections expected in March. In explaining his departure from a party he helped found, Sharon yesterday made it clear he has also abandoned his earlier notions of achieving security by retaining a Greater Israel at the expense of the Palestinians.

A Rip van Winkle waking yesterday from a long slumber would have been stunned to hear Sharon say that his new party -- which has attracted several Likud notables -- will be a ''liberal" party and will adhere to the road map for Mideast peace sponsored by the United States, the European Union, the United Nations, and Russia.

In saying goodbye to the hard-liners in Likud, Sharon was also saying goodbye to his own previous illusions. Not only did he say he is prepared to dismantle West Bank settlements to achieve a final-status peace accord. He also said, ''There is no additional disengagement plan." This was Sharon's way of indicating that he no longer intends to impose unilateral actions on the Palestinians, as he did in his handling of the Israeli disengagement from Gaza.

Sharon did not disavow or apologize for his unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, but he made a point of contrasting the unilateralism of that action with the negotiations that are required by the road map. He explained the need to break from the hard-liners in Likud by saying that the Gaza disengagement they had bitterly opposed has opened up a ''historic opportunity" for Israel, and he ''will not allow anyone to squander it."

A lot can go wrong before Sharon or a successor gets the chance to fulfill the hopes arising from his apparent metamorphosis and the resulting reconfiguration of Israel's political map. But for good reason, eminent Israeli doves are hailing this sudden transformation as an opportunity to forge a governing coalition, built around mainstream parties of the center and the center-left, that will be capable of negotiating the two-state peace agreement large majorities of Israelis and Palestinians want and need.

The ice is breaking up in Israel's domestic politics. Something similar will need to come out of the Palestinian elections in January: a majority that functions as the peace camp. The Arab states will have to lend their support to the negotiations, and Iran will have to cease promoting terrorism by Palestinian Islamist cells. And at some point the US president, or, more likely, the secretary of state, will have to plunge into the indispensable hard work of helping the belligerents strike the bargain both need so desperately.