Last update - 00:00 18/10/2006
They are scared, and that is scary
By Gideon Samet
The most terrifying thing about the terrible situation we have found ourselves in is that all the bosses at the top are motivated by one thing: staying at the top. The prime minister would not ingratiate himself before the fascist Avigdor Lieberman had the latter not wooed him with the supposed broadening of his power base. Amir Peretz would raise his voice, as he used to do during every labor dispute, had he felt secure in his leadership of the Labor Party and in his place in Olmert's coalition. This is the case of the vacillating Labor heads, the president who is clinging to his office, and the chief of staff. They are scared, and that is scary.
The initiative to alter the system of governance is particularly ironic. Change? Of course. To change the government, were it possible. But the system of governance? To give serial blunderers eight secure years in power? To bring in a man and a party that for the first time justify the comparisons, which I normally find tiresome, with the worst regimes of the 20th century? Over the past weeks, Lieberman and his dangerous statements have reminded one of the proponents of dictatorships that infiltrated European leaderships with generous assistance from democracy. And Olmert is willing to bite the bullet, smiling, in order to stay in power.
Let us put the lessons of the war aside for a moment. They will be deliberated by a commission appointed via a process that is ugly in its own right. The important matter now is the destabilized regime. If Lieberman's bill on presidential rule is indeed to be brought forth for a preliminary reading today, a Knesset that still seeks to retain minimal reason and decency must, as they sometimes say in court, toss this proposal out the window. Because it is not just wrong from every aspect. The mere fact that it has been put forth, and the circumstances surrounding it, are irrefutable proof of the depths to which the political system has fallen. Enough has been said about the defects of the Lieberman-Olmert initiative for the Knesset to regain its composure and destroy it.
In another sign of political decline, the Israeli parliament will soon face an even more difficult task: impeaching the president, if he does not decide to save himself from further shame and disgrace. The necessary majority is the largest needed in any type of vote. The need to do so is no less enormous.
I am hard-pressed to find another period in the past decades that resembles these days in terms of the justified fear for the country's fate. Not the days of "the last one at Lod [airport] should turn off the lights," on the eve of the 1967 war. Not Yom Kippur 1973. The difference is not just in the enormity of the threats, some of which have been brought upon us by the governments of the 1980s and 1990s - with the exception of the Rabin government - in the scandalous way they handled the Palestinian problem. During these years the necessity of defining the new Israel was unforgivably neglected. The new Israel needed to be one not handicapped by empty statements, footdragging and political scheming - like that of our neighbors - and the occasional hollow declaration, like Olmert's audacious peace initiative with Lebanon this week.
During this period, with the help of vicious Palestinian pugnacity, Israeli anxieties became firmly rooted, as did the willingness to rely on the fake excuses of Israel's leaders that there was no one to talk to. This had always been convenient for the prime ministers and their viziers, who rejected serious discussions with neighboring leaders, one after the other, out of fear for their skin. The current leadership, whose concern for its life expectancy stymies it more than anything else, has failed even in bringing back the kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit, one of its two goals in the failed war. Why? Because of that same pathetic electoral fear of "giving in to the Arabs," of releasing via a one-time deal - not, god forbid, via a consistent, creative negotiation for an overall agreement - the same number of prisoners we will have to give them in any case.
No less depressing is the knowledge that this political structure will remain as it is for too long. There is no chance for change except if the recognition of the seriousness of the national situation permeates deeper into the Israeli denial defenses. This will claim another period of bloodshed. Only a civil and political awakening will be able to cut its days short.