Ehud Olmert: sacrificing policy for survival

by Shira Herzog

TORONTO - There's an ill wind blowing through Israel's political landscape these days, and it's got little to do with the possible indictment of President Moshe Katzav on sexual assault charges. The more serious matter is Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's effort to shore up his government's majority by broadening the coalition. To get there, he's sacrificing policy on critical issues such as the Palestinian question and Syria, in favour of politicking over cabinet seats and privilege.

To be sure, Mr Olmert's Kadima party has a problem. Its key coalition partner, Labour, is split on support for next year's national budget. Labour's rebels want to unseat party leader (and Defence Minister) Amir Peretz, whom they feel is betraying the social policy agreements underpinning their participation in government. If they break party discipline and vote against the budget, Mr Olmert's government will fall. The Prime Minister's predicament is exacerbated by the breakdown of trust over his execution of the war against Hizbullah. To assure a majority and the government's survival, Mr Olmert has two options: Force Labour's hand, or broaden his coalition. Both involve reaching out to parties outside government.

Israel has had "unity" governments of unlikely partners in the past. But, right now, Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu believes his interest is best served biding his time in opposition. That leaves the only likely candidate for inclusion to be Avigdor Lieberman of the Yisrael Beitenu party, whose controversial policies -- including support for capital punishment and revoking the citizenship of Israel's Arab citizens -- are anathema to the country's moderates.

Mr Olmert knows this, but his first thought is political survival. Since Mr Lieberman craves public legitimacy, it's possible the two men will compromise enough to allow for co-existence around the cabinet table. So far, the most visible concession is Mr Olmert's hastily declared support for Mr Lieberman's electoral reform plan, which would replace Israel's parliamentary system with a modified presidential version. Mr Lieberman believes in less parliamentary accountability for the executive branch and granting it sweeping powers in cabinet appointments. (In the 1990s, Israel's short-lived experience with direct prime ministerial elections led to unprecedented instability and a reversion back to the parliamentary system.)

But, with or without Mr Lieberman in the cabinet, Mr Olmert's got a problem. Quite simply, since abandoning his plan to withdraw from large parts of the West Bank, he's got no agenda. In Jewish New Year interviews, he told Israeli reporters, "A prime minister doesn't need an agenda; he just needs to run the country." For many Israelis, that's precisely the problem.

Opponents on the right criticize Mr Olmert for not going far enough in Lebanon and Gaza. Opponents on the left criticize him for failing to respond to Syrian and Saudi overtures that might create new opportunities on the Palestinian issue and regional security. And social activists are dismayed with his abandonment of promises to restore key elements of the country's social security safety net.

Given the scars he carries and the shadow of the committee now investigating the war in Lebanon, Mr Olmert is resorting to the safer path of sheer survival rather than action. (He may be inspired by the last Israeli prime minister to have a "no policy" policy, Yitzhak Shamir, who survived in office longer than most.) Mr Olmert just may succeed -- both for lack of a better alternative and because his coalition partners probably will come around rather than face a new election. But choosing this route would constitute an even greater betrayal of Mr Olmert's mandate to govern.

The world, Arab leaders and Israelis want and need more than this. Over the past six years, inaction and political weakness on all sides have allowed extremist parties to capitalize on resentment, frustration and hatred. As the International Crisis Group notes in its most recent report on the Arab-Israeli conflict, there just may be a slender opportunity in Lebanon's aftermath to jump-start a process to identify common ground among regional and international parties concerned with Iran's burgeoning nuclear capacity.

In a similar vein, earlier this month, a broad-based group of global leaders (including former Canadian prime ministers and foreign ministers) issued a "call for action on an Arab-Israeli settlement": an international conference leading to security and full recognition for the state of Israel within internationally recognized borders; an end to the occupation of the Palestinian people in an independent, sovereign state; and the return of lost land to Syria leading to Israeli-Syrian and Israeli-Lebanese pacts.

Last summer, Mr Olmert ignored the Group of Eight statement on Lebanon that was more sympathetic of Israel's goal and, weeks later, settled for a much less sympathetic Security Council resolution ending the war. Time doesn't always work in Israel's favour.

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Shira Herzog is a columnist with the Canadian Globe and Mail and divides her time between Toronto and Tel Aviv. This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org.

Source: The Globe and Mail, 19 October 2006, www.globeandmail.com
Copyright permission has been granted for republication.

date: 2006-10-26