Today's Situation

Generals and captives Friday, September 15, 2006

But the Israeli media is utterly convinced that the war was a failure from the start, even though very few in the Israeli press are asking whether the war should have broken out at all. Instead the questions are all about poor decision making about relying on the air force, when to send in ground troops, logistics, and why the IDF was not allowed to ‘finish the job.’ Under pressure from the press -- and the political arena -- Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has changed the composition of the investigative panel he appointed to examine the war’s management, naming former district court judge (and top army JAGF officer) Eliahu Winograd to head the panel, and the panel will apparently be given some extraordinary powers to deal with uncooperative witnesses, which are expected to range from relatively low-ranking officers all the way to the premier himself.

Changing the panel has not assuaged the critics, however. Former chief of staff Amnon Lipkin Shahak said bluntly this morning on Israel Radio that while even a judicial commission of inquiry has flaws, it is the only format that has a chance of restoring the credibility of the army and the political echelon. He said the Winograd committee, which includes two ex-generals, a law professor and a professor of government, as well as the retired judge, simply would not have the weight that a commission headed by a Supreme Court Justice, who independently appoints the other members of the panel, would have.

Meanwhile, there seems to be progress on the issue of a prisoner exchange between Israel and the Palestinians, if not the Hizbollah. There are persistent reports that negotiations between Israel and that part of the Hamas military wing in Gaza that is controlled by the Damascus-based Hamas leadership, are in an advanced state, with both sides aiming for the Jewish New Year and Ramadan, which coincide this year. The official PA daily paper, Al Ayyam was reporting today that Egypt has passed on a handwritten letter from abducted corporal Gilad Shalit to his father, Noam. Shalit pere has not confirmed the report. But last night an unnamed ‘senior IDF officer’ told the media that Shalit is alive and well in Hamas hands in Gaza and that he has become a burden instead of an asset to them.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas has meanwhile postponed the dismissal of the PA cabinet ahead of the formation of a new, ‘national unity’ government. He reportedly is saying that the Shalit affair must be ended before the national unity government can be formed. He sent his former prime minister and longtime associate, Ahmed Qurei’, to Damascus yesterday for talks with Palestinian radicals there who hold sway over Shalit’s captors. Abbas is expecting Israel to free several hundred prisoners in what will apparently be a staged release, in exchange for Shalit.

One hiccup in the way was a military appeals court deciding to postpone its hearing yesterday until this coming Monday on an army appeal of a military judge’s decision to free 18 of the Palestinian parliamentarians and ministers who Israel grabbed out of the West Bank in the wake of the Shalit abduction in June. The military judge’s decision earlier this week was seen as one part of the many pieces of the prisoner exchange puzzle.

Abbas knows why he needs a prisoner exchange before he forms the national unity government. The U.S. and Israel have obviously not signed onto the idea that the Hamas-Fateh government is a step forward in the peace process. But despite initial expectations that the EU at least would regard the national unity government as an opening for releasing hundreds of millions of dollars in donor aid to the Palestinian Authority, the European enthusiasm for the new government -- which has yet to be named -- seems chillier than the Palestinians expected. EU sources are quoted in the Israeli press as saying that an emergency fund might be opened for the new government, depending on its makeup and policies, but the PA should not expect the floodgates to open and money to pour into impoverished Gaza, at least not until there is a clear sign that Hamas has signed onto some basic conditions: recognizing Israel, renouncing terror and accepting past PA and PLO agreements with Israel. In short, formal acceptance of the two-state solution, something that Hamas has opposed from the start. The EU foreign ministers were meeting today and the Palestinian issue will be on their agenda. There will be plenty of self-congratulatory backslapping there on UNIFIL II -- the Europeans at first were very hesitant about sending troops but now are almost eager to do so, proving Israeli (and American) skeptics wrong.

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