Today's Situation

The Peretz factor Monday, April 24, 2006

Olmert faced two options when Kadima came in with only 29 seats in Knesset instead of the 35-40 that it most probably would have won with Ariel Sharon at its head. He could form a Rightist government, assuming that Labor would leap in at the last moment, for a cheap price, or he could go the way he chose -- a strategic alliance with Labor's Peretz, who needed more than five ministerial seats to sooth the inevitable ruffled feathers in the top tiers of Labor.

For weeks there has been theoretical talk about Peretz becoming defense minister, but now that it appears to be a certainty, the first of several losers is Shaul Mofaz, the chief of staff who was given the defense ministry almost by default by Ariel Sharon. Mofaz, in a funk that Olmert decided he was replaceable has canceled the annual Defense Ministry cocktail party for Independence Day and is said to be 'considering his options.' A political opportunist with little grace and nuance, he could yet reappear in the Likud, where he went from being a likely failure in the race to replace Sharon, to joining Kadima two weeks after Sharon formed it. Olmert has offered Mofaz the Industry Ministry but Mofaz probably reckons it is beneath him. Trouble for Mofaz is that he has no real political base, so Olmert could easily sacrifice him.

Not that the general staff -- or some of the military correspondents -- are happy about Peretz's impending arrival. One TV military correspondent haughtily said last night that the Israeli public can sleep soundly, 'because the general staff and the head of the Shin Bet will continue making defense policy.' Indeed, under Mofaz and Sharon, there was no real civilian control over the army -- Mofaz, an ex-chief of staff, tried to be a super-chief of staff over Moshe Yaalon and Dan Halutz, but until Sharon fell ill, the prime minister was the real policymaker -- and he more or less allowed the army to do whatever it saw fit (unless the Americans intervened). Under Olmert, the army general staff has been even more autonomous.

Some regard the Peretz appointment as a ploy to ruin his career, expecting him to collapse under the burden of responsibility for the defense establishment, defeated by a domineering chief of staff, Halutz, who is considered very aggressive. But others hope that the civilian -- and dovish -- Peretz will bring a new outlook to the defense establishment, which by nature tends to believe that if force doesn't solve the problem, more force will.

Thus, Israel just this morning was lobbing hundreds of artillery shells into the Gaza Strip, at ostensibly empty lots where Qassam launches take place, in retaliation for an overnight launch of a Qassam that landed south of Ashkelon, the Israeli city just north of Gaza. Others expect him to use the position to cut the defense budget to help finance social welfare issues that Labor campaigned on. And yet others are pinning their hopes on Peretz to use his position as defense minister, meaning the sovereign in the occupied territories, to change IDF and Shin Bet policy toward the Palestinians -- and the settlers, who are legally at least, subjects of the defense ministry. Peretz, for example, could cut off most of the government funding to the settlements, send troops to dismantle illegal outposts, and put an end to army protection for Jewish settler outlaws who don't disguise their efforts to run Palestinians off their lands.

Meanwhile, however, Olmert has to finish formalizing his government and he still faces problems. Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beitenu is not read to sign the government guidelines that Kadima has hammered out with Labor -- because it includes references to removing the illegal outposts. And Attorney General Menachem Mazuz has ruled that Lieberman cannot serve as Public Security Minister as long as the police continue to investigate suspicions regarding Lieberman's ties to Russian oligarchs while he was head of then premier Binyamin Netanyahu's bureau, as well as illegal contributions to his party.

Lieberman was due to speak to his party'selected faction later today. Israel Radio was saying today at noon that Yisrael Beitenu sources were saying that Lieberman is leaning away from joining the Olmert government, which would mean a 72-seat coalition on the assumption that Kadima, Labor and the Pensioners could bring in Shas and perhaps Meretz, which would join if Lieberman is not in the government.

But this evening marks the start of Holocaust Memorial Day, and most of the attention in the press is devoted to the Nazi genocide of European Jewry during World War II. Tomorrow, the media will be devoted almost entirely to the subject, unless there are dramatic developments on the political or security front, and even if so, Holocaust Memorial Day will take precedence.

Acting Knesset Speaker Shimon Peres will deliver the keynote address at Auschwitz in Poland, at the head of the international delegation largely made up of Israeli schoolchildren on a 'March of the Living' visit to the concentration camp where more than 1 million Jews of the six million Jews killed by the Nazis were put to death in a systemized industrialized process unparalleled before and since.

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