Ariel Sharon has got to go

By Yoel Marcus, Ha'aretz    

In a normal country, the first thing expected of a prime minister suspected of bribe-taking, fraud and breach of trust, who is being questioned by the police, is to step aside, right then and there. Because someone who is suspected of such crimes - after taking an outrageously oversized loan (NIS 7 million, or NIS 14 million gross) at a totally ridiculous rate of interest, repaid with tricks and shticks, through phony companies and fishy financial channels that sent the money half around the world - can't simply wash his hands of the whole affair and blame it on the media.

It wasn't the media that produced the incriminating document, just as it wasn't the media that invented the corruption in the primaries. The allegations come from the law enforcement authorities of the state, following the discovery of an official receipt from a friend who loaned Ariel Sharon $1.5 million to repay his campaign debts from 1999. Sharon simply forgot to report the loan, as required by law.

If Sharon had nothing to hide, one presumes that immediately after the first report in Ha'aretz, he would have appeared on television and tried to convince the public that everything was legal and aboveboard. But when Sharon turns purple and says it's all a despicable lie, and his strategic advisor appears on every radio and TV program to holler and scream and say that there's not a word of truth in it, one is reminded of the response of Ben Bradlee, the editor of The Washington Post, when Nixon denied any involvement in Watergate: "It's non-denial denial." Sharon's denials sound more like the fury of a man caught with his pants down than a denial of the crimes themselves.

Even if it turns out, when the inquiry is over, that everything is perfectly kosher from the perspective of criminal law, from a public standpoint, it will still stink. There's something fishy about not telling the truth to the State Comptroller and having "no idea" what your sons are up to.

Knowing, as we do, how attached Sharon is to his ranch, it's hard to believe that he didn't know that his sons were mortgaging it off and making deals. It's hard to imagine that a man like Sharon, obsessed with details, saw nothing and heard nothing. It doesn't make sense that $1.5 million would suddenly appear and he wouldn't know how it got there and where it came from. Even odder was his reply to the question of why his son, Omri, chose to remain silent under investigation: "He's a big boy now."

Apropos Watergate, it bears mentioning that what brought Nixon down was not the break-in, but the cover-up and tampering with evidence. Sharon should apply the same law to himself that he invoked in the case of Naomi Blumenthal: A public figure who won't talk can kiss his job good-bye.

When the overseas dollar account affair came to light, Yitzhak Rabin owned up and resigned. It was the night of April 10, 1977, about six weeks before the elections. Because the government was a government-in-transition (no one joins and no one leaves), Rabin's resignation was a formality. But the fact is, he did go home. If Sharon doesn't come up soon with a reasonable explanation, satisfactory to both the public and the police, that is what he must do: hang up his hat and go home - to the most mortgaged ranch in the country.

When a key employee in a large company who has had access to sensitive material is fired or quits, he is asked to leave the building immediately to keep him from doing damage. But Sharon, who knows that what has now begun - a police investigation and a fight for dear life - is a process that will continue mainly after the elections, could be a danger to the state and a millstone around its neck just by remaining in office. A bundle of nerves in any case because of his ineptitude in running the country; up against terror attacks that he's been unable to prevent; manacled by Bush and denied the freedom to respond militarily until after the war on Iraq; staring at the likelihood that this same Bush will force him to withdraw from the territories when the war is over - Sharon could be unpredictable. To deflect attention from the police inquiry, he could get Israel mixed up in some surprising and dangerous capers. Bumping off Arafat with a stray missile, for instance.

On way or another, it is already clear today that Sharon is not the man who will leave the territories and make any painful concessions. He has manacled himself and the country with his bullying policies, which have ruined the economy and turned our lives into a Russian roulette of suicide bombings. The Teflon Man has become a wounded animal, liable to pitch Israel straight into the inferno. If he does not agree to resign, one can only hope that the voters will not give him the power to go on destroying the dream of a different future for this country.