Peres Quits Labor To Join Sharon’s Party
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JERUSALEM – Bitter over his ouster as Labor Party chief, Shimon Peres quit his political home of six decades yesterday to campaign for Ariel Sharon’s new party, saying the prime minister is the best choice to lead Israel to peace with the Palestinian Arabs.
Mr. Peres’s defection was an important coup for Mr. Sharon in the scramble by the major parties to recruit high-profile supporters during a political realignment the past three weeks as the country prepares for parliamentary elections in March.
Many Israelis respect Mr. Peres, an 82-year-old former prime minister, as an elder statesman and peacemaker, but they remain wary of his dovish politics.
His resignation from Labor could contribute to the view that he is a political opportunist. Mr. Peres also brings with him a reputation as a perennial loser at the polls who led Labor to five electoral defeats and lost a race this month to lead the party into a sixth election.
“This has not been an easy decision for me, but I found myself faced with the contradiction between the party of which I am a member and the requirements of the political situation,” Mr. Peres said. “Without ignoring the deep connection that I have to the party’s historical path and its members, I must prefer the more urgent and greater consideration … My party activity has come to an end.”
Under a reported deal worked out with the prime minister, Mr. Peres will support the centrist party Mr. Sharon formed last week after leaving the hard-line Likud, Kadima, but he will not officially join the party and he will not run for a seat in parliament, where he has served since 1959.
In return, Mr. Sharon – if re-elected – will give Mr. Peres a senior post in his next government, possibly putting him in charge of peace talks with the Palestinian Arabs and neighboring Arab states.
His voice shaking with emotion, Mr. Peres said the decision to leave Labor was not easy, but he believed Mr. Sharon was best suited to pursue a peace deal with the Palestinian Arabs.
“I am convinced that he is determined, as I am, to continue with the peace process and restart it immediately after the elections,” he said. “I decided, therefore, to support his election and cooperate with him to realize these goals.”
Mr. Peres’s critics said he was more concerned with remaining at the center of Israeli politics than with ending the Mideast conflict.
“You can present everything as a principle …The peace process is important, but more important is: ‘Where do I stand with the peace process? Is peace being done without me?'” a former Labor foreign minister, Shlomo Ben-Ami, said.
Despite their differences, Messrs. Peres and Sharon forged a friendship over the decades that they turned into a political partnership as Mr. Sharon fought attempts by Likud hard-liners to torpedo his Gaza withdrawal plan. Mr. Sharon has said Israel would have to leave parts of the West Bank – while maintaining major settlement blocs – in any final peace deal with the Palestinian Arabs.
A former Peres ally who now leads the dovish Yahad Party, Yossi Beilin, said Mr. Sharon has never given Mr. Peres much authority in past alliances and he doubted Mr. Sharon was interested in pursuing a real peace deal with the Palestinian Arabs.
Mr. Peres has been a major figure in Israel since the country’s creation in 1948, when he was a young aide to Prime Minister Ben Gurion. He helped create the framework for the Israeli army, developed Israel’s nuclear capacity in the 1950s, and was a key player in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process in the 1990s.
Mr. Peres is feted abroad as a statesman, and shared the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize with Prime Minister Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.