Today's Situation

A plethora of probes Tuesday, August 29, 2006

For weeks, even before the war was over, there has been speculation about what kind of probe Olmert would establish. For a few days, last week, it seemed he was giving into demands for a judicial commission, headed by a Supreme Court justice with powers of subpoena and the authority to present recommendations that include the removal of officials from office. But Olmert made the argument last night that a judicial commission would drag on for months, paralyzing the political and military establishments with officials from both the civilian and military echelons trying to save their ass by spending fortunes on lawyers and all their time on their cases. Therefore, said Olmert, he was forming a 'governmental' committee to examine the war's management.

The popular interpretation of his decision was that he was trying to avoid facing a Justice with the authority to decide that Olmert, Defense Minister Amir Peretz and Chief of Staff Dan Halutz must go. The popular assumption is that Olmert made the wrong decision to make Peretz defense minister, Peretz made the wrong decisions as the minister in charge of defense, and that Halutz was simply too cocky. The popular presumption is that the government was incompetent at running a war, the army was full of snafus, and that the Home Front, an IDF command, failed to prepare shelters, or the population, for the 3,000 rockets that landed with effect in northern Israel (another 3,000 are estimated to have landed harmlessly and unnoticed in the sea or barren areas). And many wonder why Olmert did not do 'a Nasrallah,' who gave an interview over the weekend to a Lebanese TV station admitting that if he had known the Israelis would respond even by one out of a hundred the way they did to the kidnapping of the two soldiers, he would not have approved the Hizbollah operation. In other words, say you're sorry even if you don't apologize.

Although he is expected to easily pass the decision through his government, with Kadima and Shas backing it, Olmert is not out of the woods yet. There is enormous pressure on Peretz to stand up and demand a judicial commission of inquiry, perhaps his only way to reassert his presumptions for national leadership. Many in the Labor party faction, including Peretz ally Minister Eitan Cabel, the party's secretary general, have explicitly called for Peretz to do so. The assumption behind that thinking is that Peretz cannot be blamed for unprepared emergency warehouses or the failure to properly train soldiers for facing guerillas instead of policing Palestinian areas, since he was only in office for two months when the war broke out -- and while he was Olmert's partner in the decision to go to war over the kidnapping of the two soldiers, Olmert bears ultimate responsibility.

It's a strategy, though it is still not clear if Peretz will adopt it. The conventional wisdom has been that Olmert and Peretz will either stand together or hang together. On the other hand, the amorphous public mood against the government still has no unified leadership, and if Peretz is looking for an issue to grab hold of to position himself as an alternative to Olmert, the prime minister's credibility was damaged even further by his decision against a judicial commission and Peretz, whose approval ratings are now in the single digits, has only one way to go. There's no doubt that Peretz needs to do something dramatic -- because there are forces in Labor who can point to polls showing that Ami Ayalon, for example, is right now considered the most popular candidate in the public to replace Peretz at the head of the defense ministry.

Peretz tried to finesse the public criticism of him and the army, when he named Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, the former chief of staff who has been quietly advising the novice defense minister, to head a panel to investigate the army's many snafus over the month of fighting. Like Olmert's committee, the Shahak committee is toothless, and indeed, when it began meeting last week, it was confronted by a harsh army reaction -- we'll conduct our own inquiries and nobody will testify to the Shahak committee. Halutz meanwhile has announced he is forming an internal army probe to look into such problems as failed logistical supplies to battalions, and even into allegations about some reserve officers betraying the Israeli code for mid-level and junior officers, who are supposed to command with a 'follow me' instead of staying in the command headquarters and directing troops like traffic cops.

But the fate of the politicians actually was of less interest this morning than the fate of Ron Arad, after the Lebanese Broadcasting Corp. a privately owned TV station, began running promos for a documentary it will broadcast next week with new images of Arad, who has been missing for at least the last 20 years after he bailed out over south Lebanon. The promo clearly is from the early period of Arad's captivity, which began with south Lebanese villagers turning him over to Amal, then the dominant Shiite political party in south Lebanon, which 'sold' him to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Lebanon. Since then, nothing has been heard from Arad. The Lebanese documentary is actually not about Arad, but about all the Israeli MIAs and hostages held over the years in Lebanon, including the two soldiers, Regev and Goldwasser, whose abduction prompted the massive Israeli attack on Hizbollah munitions supplies, Lebanese infrastructure, and the Hizbollah controlled Shiite neighborhood of south Beirut. So, the new video images of Arad, taken some time between 1986, when his plane was downed, and 1988 when contact with him was lost (and some say he was killed in an Israeli Air Force raid on militant positions in Lebanon, while others say he was sent to Iran), won't shed light on his whereabouts now.

However, there is no question that the documentary, which was a Lebanese-French-Israeli production, seems to be timed for release as the efforts begin for negotiations between Israel and Lebanon for the release of Regev and Goldwasser. According to an Israeli producer involved in the production, the documentary was completed a few months ago, and was supposed to be aired then, but for reasons he does not know the TV station delayed the broadcast until now.

While Regev and Goldwasser remain in Hizbollah's hands, with the Shiite organization refusing to provide any sign of their condition to the ICRC, in Gaza, Gilad Shalit is still being held by Hamas militants, Popular resistance Committee activists and members of a hitherto unknown 'Islamic Army.' According to some reports coming out of Gaza, Israel and Hamas had reached an agreement on a prisoner exchange deal but then the two Fox newsmen were kidnapped by angry militants who felt left out of the Shalit deal. It is not clear if the Shalit negotiations were indeed completed, or even if there was anything more than feelers for negotiations. Olmert, the lawyer and Peretz the union negotiator are both very proficient at backroom dealings, and both are very stubborn. No matter what their fate politically in the coming months, it is unlikely they will want to leave office without retrieving the three missing soldiers. Indeed, a successful trade could be their way out of their imbroglio.

Finally, President Moshe Katsav also remains in trouble. Police are said to have tapes of phone calls he initiated to his accuser, a former President's Residence administrator who charges he coerced her into sexual relations with him. Police are planning a 'confrontation' between the two next week. Meanwhile, Attorney General Menachem Mazuz has greenlighted the police probe into the allegations of rape. Katsav's claims that the woman was trying to blackmail him are also being investigated. The big etiquette question of the coming days is will Katsav insist on inducting Dorit Beinish as the president of the Supreme Court in another two weeks, when Aharon Barak retires at the age of 70. Former deputy court president, Mishael Cheshin has recommended Katsav suffer from a diplomatic illness that day, to avoid the embarrassment all around

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