Russian Immigrants Threaten to Derail Gaza Withdrawal Plan

ASHDOD, Israel â€”  Sonya Shmarniva, a 70-year-old immigrant from Ukraine, is a wiry woman, standing barely 5 feet tall. But she represents a very large obstacle to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as he fights for support in advance of a crucial vote.

Heading into a referendum Sunday by Sharon’s conservative Likud Party on whether Israel should withdraw from the Gaza Strip -- a vote on which the Israeli leader has staked his prestige and possibly his job -- polls suggest that the ex-Soviet immigrant bloc is responding with a loud “nyet!�

“We must hold on to the land,� said Shmarniva, shopping for vegetables in a mall in the Israeli coastal town of Ashdod, where nearly every business -- whether a bookstore, a lingerie emporium or a deli offering a dozen brands of vodka -- bears a Cyrillic-lettered sign.

“We can’t give up land,� she said. “Ever.�

Russian speakers are 10% of the 193,000 registered Likud members, making them a crucial swing vote. On Thursday, polls commissioned by major Israeli news organizations indicated, for the first time, that opponents of Sharon’s plan outnumbered supporters.

Immigrants from the former Soviet Union, who arrived in Israel in great waves during the late 1980s and 1990s, have always been among Sharon’s most ardent devotees. As an electoral bloc known collectively as “the Russians,� they handed him overwhelming support in past contests, including his landslide reelection to the prime minister’s post in January 2003.

But not this time around. Surveys suggest that Sharon and his allies have made almost no headway among the Russians since the campaign to win support for the Gaza plan kicked off in earnest two weeks ago, after a visit by the prime minister to Washington.

At his White House meeting, Sharon secured President Bush’s endorsement of his initiative, which calls for the uprooting of Jewish settlements in Gaza but envisions Israel retaining sovereignty over several large West Bank settlement blocs that lie close to Jerusalem.

Among many Israelis, this was seen as a diplomatic coup for Sharon. The Russians, however, were deeply unimpressed.

“I would say that at least two-thirds of them are against Sharon’s plan,� said prominent pollster Hanan Kristal. “And these appear to be very strongly held views.�

It’s not that Sharon hasn’t been trying. The son of Russian immigrants -- though those of a much earlier vintage, who came early in the last century to British Mandate Palestine -- he has given dozens of interviews to Russian-language newspapers, TV programs and radio stations, inevitably including at least a short personal message in his parents’ mother tongue.

But much of the Russian-language political establishment is mobilized in opposition -- even members of Sharon’s Cabinet.

Among the leaders of the anti-withdrawal movement is Natan Sharansky, the onetime Soviet dissident who has enormous moral standing among Russian immigrants.

Sharansky, who is a minister without portfolio in Sharon’s government, has been drawing an explicit parallel between the struggle of Soviet Jewry and the fight against Palestinian militant groups in Gaza, who have been openly gloating over the prospective Israeli pullout.

“Take into account your unique experience as citizens who come from a totalitarian country,� Sharansky wrote in a Russian-language letter to Likud members. “This experience shows us clearly that evil can be rooted out only through struggle, not through surrender to the aggressor.�

Analysts say the “no� camp has been able to appeal to traits that figure prominently in the Russian political profile: the desire to avoid any appearance of capitulation, a traditional reluctance to cede territory and a much more hawkish outlook than Israelis as a whole.

“We were brought up in the Soviet Union and in the spirit of the Soviet empire -- there are some ideas you take from that,� said Alex Kogin, the deputy editor of Vesti, a mass-circulation Russian-language newspaper.

In the quest for votes, opponents of Sharon’s plan have zeroed in on southern, Russian-heavy Israeli cities like Ashkelon and Ashdod, arguing that a pullout from Gaza will leave them vulnerable to missile attacks by Palestinian militants.

Hamas thus far has been able to fire only crude rockets toward Ashkelon, but military officials say the group is trying hard to gain access to longer-range weapons.

Lawmaker Yuli Edelstein, who emigrated from Russia 16 years ago and has taken a high profile in the anti-withdrawal campaign, acknowledged that Sharon’s personal popularity among Russians has complicated efforts to defeat the prime minister’s initiative.

“People do listen when he says he’s a war hero and that he knows what’s best for the country -- they like that kind of leader,� Edelstein said. “So we are trying to put forth very particular arguments against this plan, not to make it a campaign against him.�

But Sharon has been seeking to cast the vote as a measure of confidence in his overall leadership.

“It is impossible to support me but to reject my plan,� he said in an interview aired Thursday on Israel Radio. “Anyone with faith in me must vote in favor.�

The few well-known Russian-speaking politicians who support the plan recognize that they face an uphill fight -- and also quietly worry about splintering long-standing solidarity in the immigrant bloc.

“We have always worked together on social issues, so it is difficult to be in opposition to someone like [Sharansky],� said Marina Solodkin, the only Russian speaker in the Likud’s parliamentary bloc to support Sharon’s plan.

The prime minister may find unexpected support among the most unyielding of Russian hard-liners, who reason that an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza would provide a pretext for drastic military action if Palestinians use the seaside enclave as a staging ground for attacks.

“If they did that, after we had left,� said shopper Nelly Micheli, a St. Petersburg native who immigrated to Israel 13 years ago, “then, you see, we would have every reason to crush them completely. And this would be good.�