Last update - 00:00 04/12/2007
6 comments on the situation
By Yoel Marcus
1.I almost fell off my chair when I saw the banner headline splashed across Haaretz's front page: "Olmert: Two states or Israel is done for." Israel is done for? I read this quote, taken from an exclusive Haaretz interview with the prime minister, in utter disbelief. Throughout 60 years of Israel's battle for existence, no prime minister has ever declared that Israel might be "done for." The closest anyone has ever come to that was the statement by Israel's greatest general, Moshe Dayan, on the second day of the Yom Kippur War, when he told a forum of news editors that "the destruction of the Third Temple is at hand." Some of the editors (among them Gershom Schocken) worried that Dayan's desperation might leak out at the news conference scheduled for that evening. They called prime minister Golda Meir and the event was canceled. In the end, the tables turned and the war paved the way for peace with Egypt. Conclusion: Don't scare the public. Israel is not done for, in any shape or form.
2.A two-year dispute between Likud MKs Silvan Shalom and Benjamin Netanyahu has been patched up in a bid to consolidate forces and get Likud back into power. The "sulha" did not take place in Annapolis, but at a Tel Aviv hotel, and the mediator was not Condoleezza Rice, but MK Reuven Rivlin, who has a knack for this sort of peacemaking. His greatest accomplishment was the compromise he devised in the spat between Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert. Olmert wanted the finance portfolio, but Sharon was only offering industry, trade and employment. Olmert threatened: "Give me finance or I'm out the door." At that point, Rivlin intervened and suggested that Sharon grant Olmert the title of deputy prime minister. Sharon, who didn't give a hoot about honorifics, agreed. Little did he know that he was anointing the next prime minister.
3.Olmert is less apocalyptic about his own personal future. With three criminal investigations and the last installment of the Winograd report still in front of him, he was full of himself in a recent interview with Nahum Barnea and Shimon Shiffer. He bragged that all the Arab ministers shook his hand despite the fact that he gave up nothing at Annapolis (apart from agreeing to a clause in the joint declaration of principles that describes Israel as a terrorist state).
But the most interesting disclosure in the interview was his hint that he may be prime minister for the next five to 10 years. Whether he will bring peace, no one knows, but one thing is clear: He intends to break an unheard of record in Israel. No prime minister in this country has ever held the job nonstop for a whole decade. Maybe a peace treaty with Iran is also on his wish list.
4.The oddest political statement of the year must be this one by Defense Minister Ehud Barak. "Labor will remain in the government until its electoral victory is assured." According to that logic, it will stay put until it gives up the ghost. Labor, which dropped from 56 seats to 44, and now has 19, could end up like the defunct Independent Liberal party if it follows this clever strategy. The Independent Liberals, which joined every coalition, shrank from one election to the next, until they failed to reach the electoral threshold and disappeared from the map.
5.We haven't seen this yet: 40 MKs, including members of Kadima, signed a petition to oust Minister of Education Yuli Tamir. This might be a legitimate demand for the opposition, but when the minister of transportation, Shaul Mofaz, adds his signature, it runs the gamut from astounding to appalling. When a minister wants another minister fired, he doesn't join the opposition - he fights him (or, in this case, her) in the government. And if he did find Tamir's performance so upsetting, he could resign in protest himself. Tamir was right on the ball in her response: She doesn't demand that Mofaz quit every time there's a traffic accident.
In a similar incident, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni called on Olmert to resign for screwing up the Second Lebanon War. "Me? What about you?" he shot back, and she submissively backed down and continued to work for him. Under Ben-Gurion, Golda and Begin, no wayward minister would last a day after challenging the prime minister.
6.In today's era of billboard, newspaper and television advertising, Kibbutz Hahorshim's ad for their cemetery is pretty much par for the course: "Beit Olam - A Cemetery in a Whole New Spirit." "You choose everything: plot size, location, burial with or without a coffin, type of ceremony, eulogy, music, songs. For the peace of mind of the bereaved, burial in a beautifully tended leafy grove, a pleasant and inviting place for mourners. Special productions included, executed by our own staff. Cold drinks, flowers, pergolas for shade, amplifiers." In short, you could die of pleasure.