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Jewish World Review May 18, 2007 / 1 Sivan, 5766 The ‘master politician’ continues to put Israel's survival in jeopardy By Caroline B. Glick
This grave development was barely noted by the Israeli media. They were busy
with other matters.
There was the soccer championship this week. And that sudden rainstorm in
Jerusalem that forced the government to cancel the celebrations of the
fortieth anniversary of the capital's liberation was a very big deal. Then,
of course there is the Palestinian onslaught against southern Israel which
has turned Sderot into a ghost town.
But the primary reason that the Israeli media is ignoring the rapidly
gathering mushroom cloud is because Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is a master
politician.
Two weeks after the Winograd Commission's interim report found Olmert
responsible for Israel's defeat at the hands of Iran's army in Lebanon last
summer, almost no one seems to remember there was a report. Olmert has
removed his incompetence from the pubic agenda.
With no support from any quarter of the country, Olmert clings to power
through his successful use of the political art of distraction. His response
to the public outcry that the Winograd Commission's report unleashed was to
change the subject.
Rather than contend with the calls for his resignation, Olmert turned his
guns on his deputy, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. After he successfully
out-maneuvered his not terribly bright and politically unsavvy colleague,
the media completely forgot about the issue of his incompetence to lead and
placed their spotlights on Livni's pathetic political implosion.
Last week, Olmert used the Supreme Court-ordered publication of his
testimony before the Winograd Commission as an opportunity to attack the
commission that he himself appointed. And again, rather than report on the
dangers besetting Israel as a result of Olmert's incompetence, the media
gave extensive coverage to Olmert's request to reappear before the
Commission.
In his most recent gambit, this week Olmert turned his guns on the State
Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss. As UN nuclear inspectors discovered Sunday
that Iran is currently operating 1,300 centrifuges at its nuclear facility
at Natanz, Olmert, the seasoned attorney had his personal attorneys send a
58-page letter to Attorney General Menachem Mazuz requesting that he open a
criminal probe against Lindenstrauss.
From the outset, Olmert and his lawyers knew that Mazuz would reject their
request to investigate the comptroller for his investigation of Olmert's
below market price purchase of his luxury home in Jerusalem. But that was
beside the point.
As far as they were concerned, the maneuver was an out and out success. The
Prime Minister of Israel achieved his goal: for two days, his fight with
Lindenstrauss and not his unfitness to lead the country was the story of the
day.
There is little correlation between Olmert's failure as a national leader
and his success as a party politician. Two weeks after 150,000 people
crowded into Rabin Square in Tel Aviv demanding his resignation for his
failed leadership during last summer's war, the protest is all but forgotten
and Olmert is sitting pretty. His governing coalition, and particularly his
partnership with Shas and Yisrael Beitenu, is rock solid.
The consequences of the disparity between his professional and political
capabilities couldn't be worse for the country. Olmert, the major league
politician sits securely on his perch while Olmert, the little league
leader, is plunging us into a new war, which like the last one, he is
incapable of winning.
The decision to deploy a few tanks in northern Gaza on Thursday, like the
decision to send a few planes to bomb a few targets over Gaza, is not part
of an overall strategy aimed at defending southern Israel from rocket and
mortar fire. Olmert, like his friend former prime minister Ehud Barak at the
start of the Palestinian terror war seven years ago, is cynically exploiting
the IDF.
Rather than give the military an order to defeat our enemies, Olmert, like
Barak before him, has ordered the IDF to perform a sound and light show for
the public which demands that the government defend it.
Olmert's refusal to order a serious strike in Gaza has brought about the
effective abrogation of Israeli sovereignty over Sderot and the Western
Negev. It is impossible to speak of Israel as a properly functioning,
sovereign state when its citizens are forced to flee their homes because
their government refuses to protect their lives and property.
And Sderot is not alone. Just as the opponents of the 2005 withdrawal from
Gaza warned, Israel's absence from the area enabled Gaza's transformation
into a new nexus of global jihad. As a result of the incompetence and
paralysis of the government in contending with this foreseen development,
the fate of Sderot will soon become the fate of Ashkelon and Kiryat Gat.
Hamas, Fatah, Islamic Jihad, Hizbullah, Al Qaida, the Iranian Revolutionary
Guards, the Popular Resistance Committees and their friends, are not all
sitting in Gaza, armed to the teeth with anti-tank and anti-aircraft
missiles and tons of explosives just to kill one another. For nearly two
years, the open border between Gaza and Egypt has enabled terrorists and
their weaponry to flood Gaza. The increased capacity has placed an
additional 200,000 Israeli citizens within range of their rockets and
missiles.
The horrific images of the mothers and fathers of Sderot hiding beneath
their cars with their children during rocket barrages, and jumping through
the windows of buses bound for the relative safety of Beersheva, as if
missing the bus would mean certain death, and then the eerie silence as a
town is Israel is abandoned are impossible to abide. So too, the foreseeable
prospect that these images will soon plague Ashkelon and Kiryat Gat, bespeak
an unbearable future.
But these are small potatoes when compared to the danger of national
annihilation approaching us from Iran's nuclear installations.
While Olmert hunkers down in his office and alternatively wrecks our
relations with the US; dispenses empty promises to secure the south and
rebuild the north; blames everyone and anyone for his personal failures; and
speaks of "the peace process" as Palestinian society self-destructs, Iran is
sprinting to the doorway of the Nuclear Club. And with the Government of
Israel in the hands of knaves, no one is placing obstacles in Iran's path as
it acquires the means to annihilate the Jewish state.
As the Times reported, when UN nuclear inspectors visited the Natanz
nuclear facility on Sunday, they saw 1,300 centrifuges buzzing along,
producing nuclear fuel. Another 300 are poised to begin operating next week
and another 300 centrifuges are now under construction. The diplomatic
source who spoke to the Times said that if it maintains its current pace,
Iran will be operating 3,000 centrifuges by next month and 8,000 by the end
of the year. With just 3,000 centrifuges in operation, Iran will be capable
of enriching sufficient bomb-grade uranium to produce one atomic bomb per
year.
Daily, the Iranians and their Hizbullah and Palestinian proxies threaten
that if Iran's nuclear installations are attacked, they will retaliate by
attacking Israel with tens of thousands of rockets and missiles. There is no
doubt that this threat should be taken seriously.
But what will become of Israel if we do not attack Iran's nuclear
installations? Can anyone believe that the same Olmert who was incapable of
defending northern Israel from Hizbullah last summer, and who today is
incapable of defending southern Israel from the Palestinians, will be able
to defend central Israel from a nuclear-armed Iran?
Olmert tells us that we have nothing to worry about because the Americans
will deal with the Iranians for us. But the US's actual policies towards the
ayatollahs tell a different tale. This week, the Americans reacted with
indifference to Iran's swift nuclear progress. R. Nicholas Burns, the
Undersecretary of State for Policy who directs US policy towards Iran, told
the Times that the newest revelations from Natanz will not affect American
policy.
"We're proceeding under the assumption that there is still time for
diplomacy to work," Burns said, adding that if the Iranians maintain their
refusal to suspend their uranium enrichment activities, "We will move ahead
toward a third set of sanctions."
And while the Burns declared the US's resolve to impose a third set of
sanctions on Iran after the first two failed completely to affect Iran's
behavior, on Wednesday, the State Department announced that it would begin
direct negotiations with the Iranians on May 28.
The only voices in Washington these days calling for military action against
Iran's nuclear facilities belong to people, like former US Ambassador to the
UN John Bolton, who were forced from their positions after the Democratic
victory in last November's Congressional elections.
And this brings us back to Israel — and to the Prime Minister who is unfit
for his position but uses his stunning political acumen to cling to office.
Two weeks after the Winograd Commission's report, and ten months after the
last war, it is clear that Olmert will take neither his own incompetence nor
the public's rejection of his leadership into consideration.
He will not resign from his position even if 300,000 people
demonstrate in Rabin Square. He will not resign from office even if Ashkelon's 90,000 residents
are forced to flee just as Sderot's 20,000 residents are fleeing today. He
will not quit even if Iran conducts a nuclear test.
Rather than go home, he will pick a fight with Livni over how best to divide
Jerusalem or surrender Hebron, or with Mazuz over his right to give millions
of shekels of government subsidies to industrialists who are represented by
his former law partner.
The enormous gap between the threats that Israel faces and the agenda of the
Israeli government has become a threat to our national security. The only
way to turn the tide is to hold new elections.
JWR contributor Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post. Comment by clicking here.
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