VOL. XLVII
No 06
9
The Political Scene (9 February 2004)
The stand off between Iranian conservatives and reformists over the forthcoming parliamentary elections remains unresolved. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has announced plans to evacuate settlements in the Gaza Strip.
Impasse In Tehran
As so often in the past, the current confrontation between reformists and conservatives in Iran has threatened to develop into a zero-sum collision in which one side or the other must lose without the underlying program ever actually coming to a head. After the conservative-dominated Guardians Council (GC) last month disqualified 3,605 of the 8,157 potential candidates – including some 83 sitting members of the Majlis – in the 20 February parliamentary elections, Interior Minister Abdolvahed Mussavi-Lari sent a letter to the GC on 29 January suggesting that the elections might be postponed until the two sides have resolved their differences. Two days later the head of the GC, Ayatollah Ahmad Janati, replied that “the matter of postponing the election was not accepted.” In the meantime, the GC completed the review of its decision requested by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and announced on 30 January that it had reinstated 1,160 of the banned candidates – but, as the reformists pointed out, hardly any of these were from their ranks and the number of reformist MPs disqualified actually rose to 87. Accordingly, on 1 February, some 120 reformist MPs resigned, saying that “we cannot continue to be present in the parliament that is not capable of defending the rights of the people and which is unable to prevent elections in which the people cannot choose their representatives.” The next day, the head of the reformist Islamic Iran Participation Front (and brother of President Mohammad Khatami), Mohammad Reza Khatami, announced that “we have no hope that free and legal elections will be held on February 20” and that “the Participation Front has decided by a very large majority not to take part.” Ayatollah Khamenei then stepped in again, emphasizing on 4 February that “the parliamentary elections will be held on 20 February, without being delayed by even one day” and warning that “it is the duty of the government to organize the elections and nobody can, in dispute, fail to carry out their legal duty and dispense with their responsibilities.” However, he also expressed optimism that the crisis could be resolved, saying that “there is no knot that cannot be untied…as shown by the revolution which has overcome every obstacle placed in its path.” At MEES press time on 6 February, however, it appeared that any compromise was likely to be at the expense of the reformists, proving that the conservatives remain as adept as ever at holding democratic elections while ensuring that they retain their grip on power. Perhaps the Americans, who would dearly like to do the same in Iraq, should take a leaf out of the Iranians’ book and set up some sort of Iraqi equivalent of the Guardians Council. Or perhaps they already have in the form of the caucuses to be organized by the Coalition Provisional Authority to pick organizing committees to appoint a transitional assembly to name a provisional government.
Sharon Plans To Remove Gaza Settlements
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has always been a hard-line champion of settlements in the occupied territories, so it came as something of a bombshell when, after months of speaking vaguely of “painful concessions” in the search for peace, he announced that he intended to evacuate most of the settlements in the Gaza Strip. Mr Sharon told the daily Haaretz on 2 February that he had “given an order to plan for the evacuation” of the settlements. “It is my intention to carry out an evacuation – sorry, a relocation – of settlements that cause us problems and of places that we will not hold onto anyway in a final settlement, like the Gaza settlements,” he said. “I am working on the assumption that in the future there will be no Jews in Gaza.” As for the far more numerous settlements in the West Bank, Mr Sharon’s spokesman, Raanan Gissin, indicated that the prime minister has something even more radical in mind – the incorporation of West Bank settlements into Israel and of Arab Israeli territory into a Palestinian state – when he said on 3 February that “Sharon envisages territorial exchanges with the Palestinians as part of future permanent arrangements, under which Arab Israeli localities would pass under the sovereignty of the latter, while Jewish settlements would be integrated into Israeli territory.”
Unlike the evacuation of Gaza, the proposed territorial exchange in the West Bank would presumably require a modicum of Palestinian cooperation, raising the question of how this might square with Mr Sharon’s intention to move ahead with a unilateral “separation” from the Palestinians as an alternative to the international “road map,” which he has never favored. The Palestinians themselves appeared not to know what to make of Mr Sharon’s remarks, but that was not true of the Israeli right wing, which made its opposition to the evacuation of Gaza known in no uncertain terms. In particular, the settler-oriented National Religious Party (NRP) threatened to quit Mr Sharon’s coalition government, reducing its majority in the 120-seat Knesset to 62 from 68. Mr Sharon in turn declared on 3 February that “I will not hesitate to set up another government…I have no intention of being at the mercy of factions…that won’t permit me to handle matters of state.” However, that may not be necessary, since the main opposition party, Labour, which has 19 Knesset seats, indicated it was prepared to back the government on Gaza, with Labour leader Shimon Peres saying on 3 February that “we are prepared to support the government without even being in it as long as it is on the path to peace.”
Charles Snow