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Hirsh Goodman: The Silence of the Lambs

All in all, things do not seem to be going well for Sharon. His sons� refusal to cooperate with investigators does not sit well with the public

The irony of it all. At last Israel has a consensus prime minister, acceptable to the Americans, who has forged a working relationship with the new Palestinian leadership and who seems to be capable of delivering on the peace process when, zap, he could disappear from the political arena for totally non-political reasons.

The police investigation into the Sharon clan�s good fortune in having untold millions thrown at them for unclear reasons by people of no clear identity is closing in. The prime minister has seen his sons, Gilad and Omri, interrogated by the police. Gilad, the youngest, has chosen to remain silent during investigation, doing exactly what his father had ruthlessly criticized Likud Knesset Member Naomi Blumenthal, a deputy minister at the time, for doing when she faced police questioning into charges of buying votes in the Likud primary leading up to the last election. Gilad Sharon has also refused to honor a court request to hand over specific documents to investigators. The police claim they are in "safe-keeping" at Sharon�s Sycamore sheep ranch -- which has become, de facto, extra-territorial, at least in the meantime. Omri, the older son, has in the past also given police investigators the silent treatment -- a stance which Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein blasted as being both "unacceptable" and "publicly malignant."

All in all, things do not seem to be going well for Sharon. Gilad�s and Omri�s silence, their refusal to cooperate with the investigation and to obey court orders, do not sit well with the public. Sharon claims he never knew a thing about the so-called Greek Island affair and South African Cyril Kern�s $1.5 million loan to cover repayment of illegal campaign contributions, and the boys concur. But the public is not totally na�ve. Neither are the police.

Investigations, once started, have a rhythm and a logic all of their own. And, say people who think they understand such matters, the outcome for the Sharons is almost inevitable.

Prime Minister Sharon, therefore. has a real problem. The only questions left are how long it will take to develop, and what kind of obstacles will be placed in the investigation�s way by the political echelons and those who are both close and faithful to the prime minister.

All this does bode well for Israel, the Palestinians or the very precarious road map now in its infant stages. The last thing Israel needs right now is an election and Benjamin Netanyahu, an inexperienced Shaul Mofaz, or Ehud Olmert, technically the second in line, as prime minister. Shimon Peres, the temporary leader of a phantom party, does not have a chance.

Netanyahu is both the most likely candidate to win and the most vocal and senior critic of the road map as a road to hell, so one does not have to use much imagination to know what the impact of his ascent on our relations with the Bush Administration would be. The impact on the Palestinians would probably be just as profound. Sharon and Abu Mazen have a good, pragmatic, no-nonsense working relationship. Palestinian incitement has dropped considerably, security cooperation is advancing and an understanding of problems on both sides is just starting to replace the violence of the past two and three-quarter years. All this will hang in the balance if Israel now goes through regime change and the consequent breakdown of continuity. Relationships of trust have to be reestablished, and understandings, renegotiated, and all this at a delicate and volatile time when the slightest spark could have the sides back at each other's throats again.

Sharon is also the only politician on the Israeli political horizon who can take down settlements, and can recognize a Palestinian state with provisional borders as part of a process whose foreseeable end-game, after a period of time, involves an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capital as part of a permanent settlement that has the Jewish state and the Palestinian state living side by side. And Sharon has the political skills and the numbers in the Knesset to deliver such a peace package.

Justice has to be served. Yitzhak Rabin stepped down in his first term in 1977, because of an illegal bank account in his wife�s name. His departure set the stage for the ascension of Menachem Begin and the Likud -- which was, for many reasons, a constructive change that corrected entrenched social, economic and political imbalances existing at the time. This time, however, there is no good to be seen on the horizon. Indeed, all one can hope for is that Sharon turns out innocent -- something the silence of his sons makes very hard to believe will be the case.