Government crisis

The Sharon Government is in crisis today because the Shinui (Change) faction
in the coalition voted against the 2005 State Budget. The reason they did
was because Sharon awarded 290 million shekels to the United Torah Judaism
party interest groups in the Budget, as a means to persuade them to join his
coalition. The secular Shinui Party refuses to be in a coalition with the
ultra-orthodox parties and is against such payments to them (although not to
its own interests). Then Sharon carried out his threat and fired all the
Shinui Ministers who voted against the Budget. Because the budget motion was
defeated in the Knesset this means that the Government has been defeated and
ordinarily would be forced to resign, thus triggering new elections.
But, Sharon has the possibility of resurrecting his Government as a
different coalition with Labor in a National Unity coalition and with the
orthodox parties UTJ and Shas. The problem with this scenario is that Labor
also refuses to serve with Shas, and will only join the coalition in order
to bring about the Disengagement from Gaza and the West Bank, while Shas has
so far refused to support the Disengagement Plan. So the rescue of his
Government by a new coalition by Sharon at this point is far from assured.
Meanwhile Marwan Barghouti has reversed himself again and is now going to
stand as a candidate for Presidency of the PA. This is not surprising,
since he does represent the constituency of the "young guard" of the Fatah
and it was very surprising that he would accede to the wishes of Abbas
representing the "old guard" (those who came with Arafat from Tunisia) not
to compete with him as the official Fatah representative. Now we go back to
the situation where we see whether or not the Palestinians opt for peace (by
voting for Abbas) or for continued intifada (by voting for Barghouti).
Hamas announced that they will not stand a candidate, because they do not
recognize the elections. In fact they told their supporters not to vote at
all but to boycott the election, which is good for Abbas. It is not widely
realized that not only does Hamas not recognize Israel, but they do not
recognize the PA either!
So on both sides of the divide things are simmering. It is unclear how
things will turn out in Israel or the PA. But, if Sharon manages to pull
off his National Unity coalition and the Disengagement Plan goes ahead, and
if Abbas is elected President of the PA and can somehow reduce the violence
and really can institute talks with Israel, then there is at least the
possibility (or the illusion) of hope.