For those who still needed proof of the cravenness and duplicity of Israel's Labor Party, the party that spawned "Peace Now" and "Oslo" among other gross deceptions, it came today. Even top officials in the party can't stand it any more and are crying out in desperation and shock.

"Slithering on its belly" says the former Foreign Minister, Ben-Ami. "You're giving him [Sharon] the world," former Justice Minister Beilin cried out, now faced with making good on his pledge to bolt the party after 30 years of acting as a lemming and stooge for Peres his mentor.

Now the truth is finally seeping out. Peres and Sharon we now learn have been friends all these 30 years; all the while Peres claiming to the world's media to be ideologically close to Beilin, his protege who according to his own convictions is the total antithesis of Sharon.

The party founded by Israel's godfather, David Ben-Gurion, is now proving that the supposed differences with the military Revionists, with the Jabotinskyites, has been mere window dressing all along, deception piled on top of prior deception.

Now Labor seems to be showing its true colors -- indeed it's been a good cop/bad cop routine for decades now with so many, possibly Beilin among them, so terribly abused and mislead all along. And in turn Arafat and crowd have been taken for such a bad ride, though actually they mostly have themselves to blame since they were repeatedly warned that they didn't know what they were doing, that they didn't know whom they were dealing with, that they didn't realize where they were being taken and why. And in turn of course the Arafat crowd -- with their fancy homes, lavish tastes, VIP passes, foreign bank accounts, and corrupted personalities -- took their people into the greater bondage of today via the route of what was formerly known as "the peace process".

If ever the enemies of Zionism needed any further vindication for their refusal all these years to believe anything either major wing of the Zionist movement was trying to sell them on, now they have it. "Nauseating", indeed.

"Slithering on their bellies", true enough. If Beilin and Ben-Ami want to redeem themselves now they will have to do more than leave the Labor party; they and those who have professed to stand for an ideology divergent from oppression, torture, bondage, ocupation, and apartheid, should realize their moment of truth has come...as well.

TEL AVIV (Reuters - 26 February) - Israel's Labor Party has agreed to join Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon in a unity government which supporters hailed as a bid to keep peacemaking alive and opponents condemned as a sham.

"The country has a chance for peace and the party has a chance for renewal," Labour's Shimon Peres, a former prime minister who could become Israel's next foreign minister, said after the center-left party's Central Committee voted on Monday for the partnership.

The vote, after a particularly stormy debate, paved the way for hawkish Likud leader Sharon to finalize coalition details with right-wing and religious allies and take office by an end-of-March deadline.

"You're giving him the world," outgoing Justice Minister Yossi Beilin, a leading Labor dove opposed to the coalition, told the 1,600-member committee, which voted by a margin of 67 to 33 percent in favor of a unity government.

"It's a bonanza: a Nobel prize winner in a government with 'Gandhi'," Beilin said, referring to peace laureate Peres and using the nickname of Rehavam Zeevi, whose National Union party advocates expelling Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza.

Outgoing Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami told Labour's Central Committee meeting he was "nauseated" by the spectacle of the party "slithering on its belly" to join up with Sharon.

Labor has been in disarray since Sharon crushed Ehud Barak in a February 6 prime ministerial election hastened by a Palestinian uprising that erupted after the Likud leader visited a hotly contested Jerusalem holy site last September.

The landslide underlined deep public dissatisfaction over Barak's peace proposals, which many Israelis viewed as overly generous at a time when Palestinians were waging a violent campaign for independence.

Sharon has said he will take a more cautious approach to peacemaking with the Palestinians and seek incremental, interim agreements instead of the full, final accord Barak had hoped to achieve.

But Sharon has insisted that the Palestinians must first stop the uprising before peace efforts can resume.

He had no immediate comment on Labour's decision to join an alliance, but he told reporters before the meeting: "I hope and expect that...the feeling of responsibility will take precedence over everything else."

In one of his most fiery speeches in years, Peres told the Central Committee that Sharon had agreed to coalition guidelines negotiated between Likud and Labor that a unity government would make "painful concessions" for peace.

"The time has come to listen to the people," Peres, 77, urged the gathering, raising his voice above the din of hecklers and gesturing from the podium. "For once and for all, listen to the people."

Earlier on Monday, Sharon set out three conditions for an end to Israel's blockade of the West Bank and Gaza: a public statement by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat renouncing violence, an end to anti-Israeli "incitement" and renewal of security coordination.

Sharon said Secretary of State Colin Powell had conveyed his conditions to Arafat during their talks on Sunday in Ramallah.

Sharon said that if the conditions he had set out were met, Israel would be able "to allow raw materials to pass and also some labourers into Israel."

Israel has curbed movement of goods and people through the borders of the West Bank and Gaza Strip since the start of the uprising. Israel cites security reasons for the clampdown, which the Palestinians condemn as collective punishment.

Peres told his audience in Tel Aviv the Palestinian uprising and "future dangers" if Iraq developed a nuclear option meant the Labor Party could not turn its back on the challenges facing the Jewish state.

"Isn't this our country? Do we have another country? We'll sit and wait for what -- to make a few more speeches in opposition?" he asked the audience.

Fresh violence in the West Bank underlined the challenges facing peacemakers.

Israeli troops shot dead a 15-year-old Palestinian during stone-throwing clashes near the city of Ramallah, local hospital sources said. At least 333 Palestinians, 61 Israelis and 13 Israeli Arabs have been killed since the uprising erupted.

Peres said Sharon had offered Labor the key posts of foreign minister and defense chief and agreed to coalition guidelines that enshrined the principle of territorial compromise and honored past peace accords.

The Central Committee was expected to meet in the coming days to decide on a list of Labor ministers for Sharon to include in his cabinet.

"I am not giving up on Oslo," said Peres, who was awarded a Nobel peace prize along with Arafat and then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin a year after the 1993 interim peace deal was signed.

Mid-East Realities

www.middleeast.org

Source: http://www.middleeast.org/articles/2001/2/85.htm