Today's Situation

The partition government Friday, May 05, 2006

Olmert is slated to meet with Bush on May 23 in Washington, and only afterward might a meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazin) be added to Olmert’s schedule. The new Israeli prime minister, who will take over the Prime Minister’s Office on Sunday for the first time (until now he has been an acting premier, filling in for the comatose Ariel Sharon, and avoided the PMO) has a lot of explaining to do to Bush about his plan for ‘convergence.’ Olmert means moving some 70,000 settlers in isolated colonies throughout the West Bank, into Israel proper or the large ‘settlement blocs’ northeast of Tel Aviv (Ariel), east of Jerusalem (Maale Adumim) and west of Bethlehem and Hebron, which are south of Jerusalem (Gush Etzion). Furthermore, Olmert wants to keep Israeli troops in the Jordan Valley. The sum total of the Olmert plan is to reduce friction between Israelis and Palestinians in the territories, but it’s not to give up control over the West Bank even as Israel evacuates as much as 90 percent of it. Troops would remain in the territory ‘to prevent terror.’

It is highly unlikely, say diplomatic observers, that the U.S. will be able to accept the Israeli plan as it has been presented to the Israeli public, a move to unilaterally draw Israel’s permanent borders. That might be why in his speech to the Knesset last night, Olmert did not specify that the new lines he has in mind would be the permanent borders, but would be ‘defensible’ borders. At least that’s what his friend, veteran journalist Dan Margalit said on Channel 10, as he watched the ritual of installing the government in the Knesset. The Americans could go along with a ‘defensible borders’ move, accepting it as a prelude to negotiations with the Palestinians for final borders. Maybe.

In any case, the new Olmert government faces its first challenge on Sunday when some 1,000 troops are expected to move to evict three settler families that have occupied a building next to the ‘Avraham Avinu’ Jewish enclave in the heart of Hebron. As Shimon Shiffer of Yedioth Aharonoth writes today, for the first time since the Six Day War, the settlers do not have officials representing them inside either the prime minister’s office or the defense minister’s office. Indeed, never has there been a government more explicit in its intentions to partition the Land of Israel.

But the partition will be extremely costly -- an estimated NIS 70 billion, judging by the expense of the evacuation of Gush Katif -- and not only in money. The Right will be going through a leadership struggle between former premier Binyamin Netanyahu and his former close aide Avigdor Lieberman, who struck first yesterday, calling for the Nuremburg-style execution of Arab MKs. He was roundly condemned by the Center and Left, but on the Right, few spoke up in public to denounce the MK who only a week ago was jockeying for a minister’s seat. Once the Right has settled on a leader, the fight against Olmert’s plan will begin. The government -- and defense establishment, which is the sovereign in the occupied territories -- is not taking chances, as witnessed by the 1,000 troops being prepared for the evacuation in Hebron.

There is a clear majority in the Knesset for quitting most of the territories, but for the religious-Zionist community, a small fraction of the population that like kibbutzniks in their day disproportionately fill the ranks of the combat units in the army and in recent years leading roles in several key ministries, the Gaza withdrawal, now to be followed by Olmert’s plan is nothing less than the end of the Zionism, a sour end to the role of the state of Israel as a harbinger of the messiah’s imminent arrival.

Indeed, if there is something to be said for the new government of Israel, it is that it has no members who regard themselves on a mission from God or place ideology ahead of practical considerations. Sima Kadmon of Yedioth calls it the first ‘sane government’ Israel has ever had. Except for Shimon Peres, there are no faces from the pantheon of the founding fathers of the country. For the first time, there is government of professional politicians. It is an experiment for Israel, but there is no turning back. The generation that established the state is gone and its their heirs who are now in charge.

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