Today's Situation

Anything could happen Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Meanwhile, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan was in Israel for the day, telling a new conference that he had no reason to believe the two soldiers held by Hizbollah were not alive, that Israel is responsible for most of the ceasefire violations so far, and that he expects Israel to withdraw its remaining troops in south Lebanon once the new UNIFIL has 5,000 troops on the ground. At least 2,000 Italian troops were on board ships heading to Lebanon this morning, and there is talk that as early as this weekend many if not most of the remaining Israelis in southernmost Lebanon -- estimated at around 5,000 -- would be returning to Israel by the end of the weekend.

Annan is planning to expand his swing to include Damascus and Tehran, with some on the Israeli Right arguing that a visit to Iran right now by the secretary general would play into Tehran’s hands. But Annan has much more than the fate of two or three Israeli soldiers to discuss in Tehran -- tomorrow is the final deadline for Tehran to make clear if it is suspending its uranium enrichment program. So far it has said no, it is not, but at the same time has said it is open to negotiations about the fate of its nuclear plans. In Israel, of course, which almost daily hears reports about how Iranian President Ahmadinejad considers Israel to be the most evil state on earth, or how it will be blown away in a breath, or how it must be eliminated for there to be world peace, any deference to Tehran is considered nothing short of Chamberlain-like appeasement. On the other hand, the Israeli government and army’s failure to totally smash the Hizbollah is worrying not only Israelis but also the Americans, some Europeans and some Arab countries that feel threatened by Iran. If Israel could not defeat the few thousand Hizbollah guerrillas, what can be done against a country as large as Iran?

But, as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert pointed out yesterday in an off-the-cuff speech in which he said that the Golan would remain forever in Israeli hands -- putting paid to speculation about leveraging the war and the restoration of Arab pride into a renewed peace process with Syria -- he can appear openly wherever he wants, while Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah remains ‘in the bunker.’ That, said Olmert is just one of many signs of Israel’s victory in the war.

Maybe. Or maybe Olmert’s speech was part of his seemingly Sisyphean efforts to restore confidence in him as prime minister. His announcement of the establishment of three separate inquiries into the management of the war, politically, militarily and socially on the home front, has only prompted even more criticism of him, though the criticism has hardly boiled over into street demonstrations or angry protests. Indeed, the few dozen reservist protestors in Jerusalem outside the Prime Minister’s Office could barely draw a hundred marchers to walk the several hundred meters from the Center for Menachem Begin’s Heritage to the PMO, and the marchers deliberately walked in silence, just carrying their placards, as if their silence could overcome the daily din of politics in Israel.

There is no doubt that the political arena is in turmoil. One leading political analyst, Raviv Drucker of Channel 10 has been using the image of a dark room in which the politicians are blindfolded, trying to assess the size of the beast they call public furor. Trouble is, while there is an overall sense in the street of a need for some change, the same polls that show deep disappointment with Olmert and Amir Peretz fail to show anyone replacing them with a solid majority in the Knesset. True, theoretically, if Kadima were to fall apart, as some expect, with many of its members going back to the Likud, the Right under Binyamin Netanyahu might be able to cobble together a coalition. But it promises nothing other than more war, something that Israelis seemed fed up with. And few Israelis want elections now. Even if they did, they would not give enough votes to any one party -- or even to a bloc -- that could then put together a coalition.

In short, this is a testing time for Israeli democracy. If Olmert is right, and the investigation committees he established will work fast and if not completely thoroughly, at least credibly, he and his government could survive the crisis. On the other hand, the political tension is very high, so high that the fall discussions on the 2007 budget could easily turn into a coalition crisis that breaks up the government. What happens then is anybody’s guess, though the prevailing conventional wisdom is on a revolt against Peretz as Labor’s leader, a disintegration of Kadima as a virtual party with no roots, and a Right too fragmented to unite under one leader. In short, it’s ‘anything could happen’ time in Israel.

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