Today's Situation

Leadership crisis Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Few stood up to defend Halutz -- Peretz and Olmert remained silent. The one national level politician who rose to Halutz’s defense was Tzachi Hanegbi, the chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Commnittee, who was informed this week by the attorney general that he will face prosecution for fraud, perjury, bribery and several other serious crimes, relating to Hanegbi’s use of his position as environment minister in the first Sharon government to hand out jobs to Likud insiders. Hanegbi made the statement in Halutz’s defense at the opening of a session of the prestigious parliamentary committee -- which was meeting to hear a Halutz briefing on the war -- when everyone expected Hnegbi would use the occasion to announce he was suspending his activities as the committee chairman.

The same polls showing dramatic declines in support for Olmert, Peretz and Halutz also show Kadima managing to hold onto its relative strength as the leading party in the Knesset, while Labor dropped four seats and Likud gained eight. Not that elections are on the horizon. At least not yet. But it is clear that there is a leadership crisis in Israel, and that vacuum has resulted in a resurgence of interest in two politicians -- Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak. Neither were to be seen locally during the war, spending their time explaining Israel’s position to media audiences, mostly in America. Netanyahu’s hawkish, Bush-like views strike a chord in some parts of the Israeli public, which feels that Israel could have ‘won the war’ if only it had a leader with the gumption to destroy all that had to be destroyed in Lebanon -- and perhaps Syria and Iran -- to win. On the other hand, Netanyahu will be very vulnerable to charges that his deep cuts in the defense -- and social welfare -- budgets were responsible for the shoddy state of the shelters in the north and the complaints from reservists in particular about not being properly equipped for the war.

Barak, on the other hand, is the leader who decided on the unilateral Israeli withdrawal from south Lebanon, and like his successor, Ariel Sharon, failed to follow through on a promise to use Israeli military might against Hizbollah if it dared provoke Israel on the border. Thus, in October 2000, when Hizbollah kidnapped three soldiers, who were killed during their capture, Israel did not attack in south Lebanon. Barak is repeatedly named in Israel by some circles both on the Right and Left, for that ‘original sin’ that led to the latest war.

Meanwhile, Halutz’s main defense is that the issue is so petty considering the big issues on the table, that it can wait until after the big issues are solved: those big issues include the Israeli presence in south Lebanon, the anticipated arrival of new forces for UNIFIL, and the movement of the Lebanese Army southward. The plan seems to be that the IDF will hand over its positions gradually to the UNIFIL force, which will then hand over to the Lebanese Army. But UNIFIL’s commander, Gen. Alain Pelligrini, has said it could take as long as a year to deploy the 15,000 troops he says the force needs to be effective. Israel does not want to wait that long, of course. Even a few months would be too long, say Israeli officers, like a senior intelligence officer who spoke to Hanegbi’s Knesset committee this morning, before Halutz’s briefing. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni was due in New York today for talks with Kofi Annan about the matter.

Livni and Peretz both believe the outcome of the war should be able to yield political progress, at least with Lebanon and perhaps Syria. A few hours before Bashar Assad told an audience of sycophantic ‘journalists’ that each successive generation of Arabs is more competent and ‘hates Israel more’ so that the next generation will finally deliver a crushing blow to Israel, Peretz said that the results of the war should make it possible to consider political engagement with Syria. Livni, less sanguine, said the results of the war should make it possible to work toward a peace agreement with Lebanon. And meanwhile, despite all the bravado from various European countries about their willingness to send troops, none have actually signed up. The French, said to be the leading force in the ‘new UNIFIL’ are still waiting to hear what kind of deal the Lebanese government is working out with Hizbollah regarding weapons in the south. Hizbollah refuses to disarm, Lebanese Premier Fu’ad Siniora has promised the international community that only Lebanese government forces will bear arms in that country, and the French have made clear that they do not intend to try to do what the Israelis failed to do.

As for the Palestinians, they remain the crux of the problem and ignored by the Israelis, except for military attacks on suspected terrorists. Thus, PA Prime Minister Ismail Haniye and PA President Mahmoud Abbas are said to have reached an agreement for a national unity government, a 13-member cabinet with seven Hamas ministers and six Fateh ministers. Coincidentally, the Hamas interior ministry has issued orders to Palestinian security forces, which are actually under Abbas’ authority, to hint down collaborators with Israel. Some 200 Palestinians -- with about half civilians -- were killed in the last month in Israeli operations in Gaza that went unnoticed because of the war in the north.

But talks with the Palestinians seem to be the last thing right now on the Israeli government’s agenda. On the other hand, Henry Kissinger’s idea of a ‘grand package deal,’ involving Israeli peace deals with Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinians -- largely as a way to isolate Iran and its proxies -- is being noticed in Israel. A peace negotiation with the Palestinians is counter-intuitive for Olmert, who was elected on a platform based on unilateralism, as heir to the Sharon legacy, which said peace with the Arabs is impossible, and deals with them are ephemeral, so Israel must act on its own. That view has been totally discredited now, say some analysts, by both the Hizbollah’s Russian-made rockets and the home made rockets fired by Gazans into Israel. But barring unforeseen developments, that disillusionment with unilateralism is not likely to turn into public pressure for peace talks.

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