Today's Situation

The first general resigns Wednesday, September 13, 2006

In effect, Adam was deposed during the war by that move. In a meeting with Halutz this morning, Adam asked to be relieved of duty and they decided he would remain in place until a replacement for him is selected. The top names right now to replace him are Maj. Gen. Gadi Eisencott, head of operations, and Maj. Gen. Yitzhak 'Jerry' Gerson, commander of the home front.

Adam, the son of Yekutiel Adam, a major general killed during the First Lebanon War, has been telling close associates that he has 'a bellyfull' of complaints about Halutz's management of the war. Defense Minister Amir Peretz said this morning that 'there is no doubt' that he will want to hear Adam's complaints.

Adam said he wants to 'serve as a model of accepting responsibility,' which has become a euphemism in Israel for resignation after a failure, something rarely seen in the Israeli political arena, which has included the top echelons of the army for some time. Adam's resignation was immediately followed by calls by politicians for others -- starting with Halutz -- to follow suit. And of course the overwhelming consensus in Israel is that Peretz, who had no experience in Israeli military strategy in the past (other than serving as a junior officer in the army), must also go. His Labor Party colleague, Ami Ayalon, said this morning that 'it was a mistake from the start' for Peretz to take the defense portfolio and that he should resign and take up a social welfare ministry. Ayalon has made no secret of his plan to challenge Peretz for the leadership and polls show he would not only defeat the party chairman, but would bring Labor more votes than Peretz did in any new election.

Peretz angered ministerial colleagues last night when he was the only abstention in the government vote on the 2007 budget while Labor's ministers voted in favor of the treasury's proposed budget after much haggling over cuts to various ministries. Shas's four ministers voted against the budget, which passed handily. Peretz said he could not vote in favor of a budget that postpones in any way his election platform promise of raising the minimum wage in Israel to $1,000 a month. The treasury proposal does postpone the next stage of the increment, but increases the amount that will be paid to workers. As the country's largest single employer, the government will find a minimum wage increase very expensive. The budget now provides the army with an extra NIS 8 billion over three years, but the parliamentary fight over it has yet to begin, and when it does, Labor MKs could align with opposition MKs to try to sour the government's plans.

Other developments were also keeping the politicians in a tizzy. Police were back at the President's Residence for a fifth time this morning to question him about allegations made by three former female employees about his sexual predilections. The Knesset House Committee is expected to vote later today to accept Katsav's letter asking that he be considered 'temporarily incapacitated' tomorrow from eight in the morning until midnight, to avid the embarrassment of a president under suspicion inducting a new president of the Supreme Court. The House Committee's chairwoman, Ruhama Avraham, is also planning to introduce a non-binding resolution to the committee, calling on Katsav to suspend himself for three months, while the police investigation continues. Katsav meanwhile sticks to his claim that political interests are behind the women's complaints and that there was nothing improper in his relations with any of them. Police reportedly have taped phone calls between Katsav and at leas one of his accusers, indicating that the opposite might be true. Indeed, police sources are describing the situation as ever more embarrassing as more evidence comes in about Katsav's behavior with female subordinates over the years.

On another front, while the Palestinian Authority expects the European Union at least to start sending donor money with the establishment of a national unity government, the Israeli government is sticking to its position that there can be no talks with any Palestinian government that does not explicitly recognize the state of Israel, renounce terror, and accept all previous agreements signed between Israel and the PA -- the so-called Quartet demands. The U.S. will likely back that Israeli argument, but when Condoleezza Rice meets Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni today, the American secretary of state will also forcefully insist that Israel do whatever it can to bolster PA President Mahmoud Abbas.

Rice is not likely to explicitly instruct Livni to free prisoners to Abbas, but the there is a general consensus now in Israel that a prisoners release is inevitable, both to win back abducted soldier Gilad Shalit and to try to demonstrate good will toward Abbas. The two sides now are in a very complicated tango, working through third parties to settle on the timing of various releases. Many now await the judgment of a military appeal court tomorrow on a lower court's decision yesterday to free 18 of the Palestinian parliamentarians and ministers that Israel arrested after Shalit was grabbed by a squad of Hamas military wing, the Popular Resistance Committee, and an offshoot of that PRC known as the Islamic Army. If the appeals court upholds the release of the 18, it could be the first step in an extended dance meant to look as if Israel did not release any prisoners until Shalit was returned, but then went ahead with prisoner releases -- to Abbas. Maybe.

On another front, the German go-between supposedly working on a deal between Israel and Hizbollah for a prisoner exchange -- the Second Lebanon War begin as a result of the abduction of Eldad Regev and Udi Goldwasser, reservists on patrol inside Israel on the Lebanese border on July 12 -- is in the region. Defense Minister Peretz said today that Israel would be considering the release of Samir Kantur, in Israeli prison for nearly 30 years after he was convicted of the murder of an off-duty policeman and his son on the Nahariya beach during a terrorist attack in the last 1970s. Kantur's freedom is a key issue for the Hizbollah, because of public promises made by Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah that Kantur would be freed -- not unlike promises made by Olmert and Peretz that Shalit, Goldwasser and Regev would be freed.

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