Last update - 00:00 07/05/2007
Saying 'no' to Olmert
By Haaretz Editorial
Defense Minister Amir Peretz has actually resigned, even if he has not taken the legal steps required to do so officially. When he announced that even if he wins the Labor Party chairmanship in three weeks, he would demand to exchange the defense portfolio for the treasury, he acted in the spirit of the Winograd Committee's harsh recommendations, although he did not admit to a connection between them and his plan. The former chief of staff, Dan Halutz, acted similarly back in January. Thus there remains only one "refusenik" - the most senior of them all, still holding on to his chair: Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. His political future depends on Labor, but within that party worrisome signs are emerging of a willingness to make do with his continued tenure in office.
Such signs are visible in the maneuvers of one of the candidates, Ehud Barak. He apparently believes that the public needs to get to know him again in order to win the trust he lost when he was prime minister and defense minister, from 1999 to 2001. According to Barak's calculation, if he comes back now to the Defense Ministry and spends some time there, he will be able to win over those who doubt his leadership abilities, and reach the next elections in an advantageous position.
Thus Barak is willing - or at least his opponents suspect he is - to make an alliance with Olmert. An alliance between needy individuals, for a period of grace: each of these men, ostensibly adversaries but actually partners, for his own reasons. Both are therefore working to forge a deal of their own, in obvious contradiction to the public will as reflected in the polls, and to the findings of the Winograd Committee (although it did not present recommendations regarding the performance of individuals per se): to distance Olmert from the premiership.
If this is Barak's figuring, he is not worthy of being elected Labor Party chair; if he and MK Ami Ayalon reach a second round in the primaries, Ayalon would be preferable. One should not say "yes" to Barak if he is not willing to say "no" to Olmert.
In the prime minister's efforts to survive, he is clinging to two arguments. The essence of the first is: "The one who did the damage will remain to repair it." Taken simply, this means that Peretz must also remain in the Defense Ministry and even Halutz should be brought back as chief of staff. The second argument is that Olmert is the barrier preventing the return of Benjamin Netanyahu to the PMO, which is the expected result, say the polls, if the Knesset is dispersed and elections are held in the near future.
But the Labor Party is capable of pressuring the divided and hesitant Kadima MKs into getting rid of Olmert and picking another candidate from their ranks to take his place.
After the Agranat Commission report in 1974, the ruling party - Labor - survived the resignation of Golda Meir and the choice of Yitzhak Rabin to head the party and later be prime minister.
Today Kadima, and the coalition, can survive the ouster of Olmert. The condition for this is that Labor say "no" loudly and clearly to the prime minister and to his collaborators within the party.