Bush expended what little political capital he had left, with the Arab world, when he supported Sharon's disengagement plan/land grab. Now it looks like it's dead and Bush gets nothing.

Gamble on Sharon Goes Awry for Bush
Likud Vote Against Plan a Blow to U.S. Credibility

President Bush took a huge diplomatic gamble two weeks ago when he forcefully embraced Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to withdraw from Gaza and handed Israel key concessions on a final peace deal. The backlash in Arab and European countries was especially intense, but administration officials argued Sharon's plan carried the seeds of a breakthrough in the stalled peace process. Now, the Likud Party's overwhelming rejection of that plan has left the administration's credibility in the Middle East in tatters. The tilt toward Israel will not soon be forgotten by the Arab world, but it will be harder for the administration to claim that Bush's support of Sharon has made a difference. Moreover, the Likud vote comes when the image of the United States is already greatly damaged by accounts of psychological and sexual abuse of Iraqi prisoners by some U.S. soldiers. "The real objective of giving Sharon the blank check he left with was to shore up his political support at home," said a State Department official speaking on the condition of anonymity. "We paid a very high price and did not get a return."

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A Slender Hope From An Unexpected Quarter
by Billmon

The Likud Party's decisive rejection of Ariel Sharon's proposed Gaza withdrawal plan (actually a West Bank land grab disguised as a withdrawal plan) is the first bit of good news we've had from the Middle East in a very long time. It not only deals a potentially mortal blow to Sharon's grip on power, it also preserves the admittedly faint hope that in some distant future a viable, if not equitable, two-state solution might be found for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As a kind of dividend, the referendum results also are a sharp set back for the White House branch of the neocon cabal, which had hoped to achieve a final, perrmanent victory over the so-called Quartet -- the United States, the EU, the UN and Russia (a nominal member, at best -- by driving a final stake through the Quartet's so-called "roadmap" for getting peace negotations back on track. The great irony, of course, is that this double whammy was delivered by the Likud grassroots members, who hated the Sharon plan because they thought it gave up too much -- not because it grabbed too much.

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Analysis / Ariel Sharon has become a leader without a party

The defeat of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in the Likud Party referendum on the disengagement plan, leaves him in the same place as his predecessor, Ehud Barak, found himself in the closing days of his short term of office.

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