Anlaysis: Why Sharon gambled on Golan

WASHINGTON, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's bold move in authorizing the doubling of settlements on the Golan Heights is not the reversal but the complement of his recent speech vowing to draw unilateral new lines across the West Bank, and it reflects his confidence that President George W. Bush will back him up, or at least not rein him in.

Sharon's move certainly took the U.S. State Department by surprise. By mid-morning Wednesday, its press office still had no response to it.

The announcement is certain to enrage Syrian President Bashar Assad and destroy budding U.S. hopes for an easing of tensions with Syria. As such, it plays into the hands of the powerful neo-conservatives who dominate U.S. policymaking in the Middle East from their strongholds on Vice President Dick Cheney's staff, in the National Security Council and running Pentagon policy in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

Sharon has reason to be confident that this phalanx of hawks on U.S. Middle East policy will work hard to ensure that he and Israel are not penalized for his latest unilateral decision.

It comes right after neo-hawk guru Richard Perle, who still sits on the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, and former Bush speechwriter David Frum have just published "The End of Evil," a book that among other things urges the United States to topple the current governments of Syria and Iran. Publication of the book has been widely interpreted in Washington as the start of a new coordinated campaign by the neo-cons, both in and out of government, to force a more confrontational and aggressive U.S. policy towards at least Syria and probably Iran as well.

Sharon also timed his move as the new U.S. presidential election cycle gets under way. And while President Bush currently enjoys a sweeping national lead over Democratic frontrunner Howard Dean, he is already mindful -- and indeed, always has been -- of antagonizing one of his most important support bases, the scores of millions of Evangelical Protestants whose leaders oppose any Israeli concessions to the Palestinians and the Syrians.

Bush also hopes for up to 40 percent of the American Jewish vote in the coming election campaign, twice the percentage he got three years ago. And the powerful pro-Israel lobby in Washington has been generally highly enthusiastic about his support of Sharon up to now.

But Sharon's move also scores powerful points for him in the take-no-prisoners, internecine infighting of his own ruling Likud Party. Sharon is 75 and in questionable health. His two sons face a police probe on serious corruption charges. And his chosen heir to succeed him, Deputy Prime Minister and former Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert, trails badly in grassroots support to Sharon's old archrival, Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Sharon's speech in Herziliya proclaiming the unilateral completion of Israel's security fence to maintain control of key West Bank areas, but by no means all of it, enraged Likud maximalists and played into Netanyahu's hands. But by taking such a bold, aggressive and unilateral stand on retaining the Golan, captured from Syria in the 1967 Six Day War, Sharon undercut this dissent. For he has now plunged ahead on Golan settlement-building to a degree that none of Likud's three previous Prime Ministers, Menahem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir and Netanyahu, ever dared.

Holding the Golan has always been an especial hot button issue in Israel because the old Labor Party centrists for a long time supported it too. Golan settlements were established by old secular Labor Party volunteers rather than Likud or religious-right supporting ones, as all the West Bank and Gaza settlements were. And they were seen as essential for national defense, especially as the Syrian armored drive that was held on Golan in the 1973 Yom Kippur, or October War, came dangerously close to breaking through into Israel's north.

Support for retaining the Golan, as previous Labor prime ministers seeking accommodation with Syria repeatedly discovered, was therefore far more popular with Israeli centrists and Labor Party supporters than holding on to the whole West Bank ever was.

Finally, Sharon's bold unilateral move reflects the aggressive strategy he followed as one of the most successful but also most controversial generals in Israeli history. As prime minister over the past three years, he has often been far more cautious than many Israeli hawks wanted him to be, and he waited through many devastating terror attacks before authorizing full-scale retaliatory strikes into Palestinian-controlled territories.

However, his move on the Golan, following so quickly on his readiness to infuriate Palestinians and Likud hawks alike over the completion and citing of his security fence, signals that in his old age, "young" Sharon is back.