Last update - 00:00 22/02/2008
Pushing the buttons
By Yossi Verter
Next week Prime Minister Ehud Olmert goes abroad again, this time to Japan. Two days before that departure, Defense Minister Ehud Barak returns from a working visit to Singapore and in mid-March he is off again - to the United States. Amid this flurry of activity, the two are scheduled to meet today at the Prime Minister's Residence for a lengthy security-related discussion, part of it tete-a-tete; on Sunday they are scheduled to lunch together.
The political tension preceding the submission of the final report of the Winograd Committee on the Second Lebanon War is ancient history. The Knesset's State Control Committee, a body that will never forgo a show of self-righteous populism, this week subjected Prof. Yehezkel Dror, a member of the Winograd Committee, to a summary proceeding in the wake of his unfortunate interview with the newspaper Maariv. MK Limor Livnat scolded, MK Aryeh Eldad reprimanded, and the committee chairman, MK Zevulun Orlev, moralized. All the right-wing members of the committee vented their frustrations on the professor. As though he were to blame for the fact that Olmert is still prime minister.
Earlier this week, the world's most ancient chorus was heard for a brief moment - concerning the need for a national unity government. MK Tzachi Hanegbi, an Olmert confidant, suggested in a radio interview that Likud chair and opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu join the government "as deputy prime minister and minister for strategic threats." In Netanyahu's world, there could be no greater affront than this: that he should replace Avigdor Lieberman, who was his director general a decade ago, when Netanyahu was prime minister? And to think that the two of them, Netanyahu and Hanegbi, were buddy-buddy during that period and afterward. Only someone who knows Netanyahu up-close knows exactly which buttons to push to make it hurt.
Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik backed Hanegbi and invited Netanyahu into the government, hinting that she was speaking with Olmert's knowledge and approval. But sources in the Prime Minister's Bureau said it's his intention to go for the political process. To co-opt Netanyahu and Likud to the government at this time would not be compatible with conducting negotiations with the Palestinians for a permanent settlement.
Whether those negotiations are serious is a matter of considerable debate. A senior cabinet minister who is supposedly well-informed about what is going on in both parties to the negotiations, dampened expectations this week when he said, in a private conversation, "They are ostensibly talking about everything, but are not really talking about anything."
The current view in the Knesset is that Olmert will have no trouble surviving through the spring recess, which begins on April 9 and ends in mid-May. The question is whether he will also survive the summer session, which lasts two-and-a-half months. If he does, elections will not be held before February-March 2009. Even the resignation threats of Shas were much reduced this week, despite the fact that talks with the Palestinians are really taking place, in both the Livni-Abu Ala and the Olmert-Abu Mazen channels, and notwithstanding the ongoing Qassam rocket fire from Gaza and the Palestinians' statements that Jerusalem, too, is on the agenda.
Jerusalem is being carved up, an ashen-faced Benjamin Netanyahu told the Jerusalem Conference on Wednesday. "The prime minister said that we are not talking about Jerusalem ... But I say, if it looks like a duck, and it walks like a duck, then they are carving up Jerusalem," he asserted. Netanyahu knows very well that no one is carving up anything and that Olmert lacks the political and/or public clout to do that. But in a period when his political rivals are conducting negotiations, Netanyahu is able to persuade himself that everything is working against him and that all the issues have long since been wrapped up. A "done deal," is the way he puts it.
Familiar pain
These are hard times for Netanyahu, from the resignation of his chief of staff, followed by that of his bureau director. Those events were preceded by the release of the Winograd Committee report, which barely felt like a bump on the wing of the Olmert government. Concurrently, he felt the familiar pain of seeing the media mobilize in favor of Olmert, followed by Barak's decision not to leave the government. Then came the mass flight from his bureau which, for the umpteenth time, remained without a director, with organizational memory and without continuity. But all that was nothing compared to the return to the headlines of Sara, the self-effacing, or perhaps effaced spouse.
Let's assume that Sara Netanyahu is not to blame for the resignations in her husband's office. Let's assume that she does not insist on approving every appointment, on seeing every schedule, on authorizing every event. Let's assume that she does not use the bureau staff for family events and that her influence on her husband is not much greater than the influence of any other politician's spouse on the life of the bureau. Let's assume. So why do people abandon Netanyahu's bureau so frequently and speedily?
If the problem is not Sara, maybe the problem is Bibi. Naftali Bennett, the outgoing chief of staff, was a successful high-tech man, fueled by motivation to get Netanyahu back into the Prime Minister's Office. He didn't have a clue about politics, especially about the politics of Likud, its central committee or its Knesset faction. But it was Netanyahu who appointed him.
On the eve of the 1999 election loss, Netanyahu roared out the tribal slogan "They are a-f-r-a-i-d!" to a flock of fired-up supporters, who responded with matching roars. That same drift was identifiable in the bureau's statement this time: "Netanyahu's rivals are frustrated by his successes, and the proof is that whenever they don't have an appropriate response to his successes and to the public's growing recognition that he is the proper leader, they find under the carpet the weapon of personal gossip, including debased attacks on his wife, Sara." Almost a decade later, "They are a-f-r-a-i-d!" has become "They are f-r-u-s-t-r-a-t-e-d!"
It was none other than Finance Minister Roni Bar-On who played into the hands of Netanyahu and the Likud. On Wednesday he responded in the Knesset to a bill concerning the resumption of air flights to Kiryat Shmona. Suddenly, totally out of context, he lambasted the Netanyahus, mentioned the libel suit that Sara filed against Maariv this week, and claimed that Bibi did not have the courage to file his own libel suit, so he sent his wife to claim that "Maariv launched a campaign against Netanyahu in order to forestall his election."
The chairman of the Likud Knesset faction, MK Gideon Sa'ar, along with MK Gilad Erdan and even MK Livnat, came to the defense of Sara and of their leader. Shouts like this had not been heard for a long time in the House. Bar-On loved every minute of it. He looks for quarrels, and especially with Likudniks, his former family, and even more so with Netanyahu, the forerunner of his forerunner of his forerunner in the treasury. But the Likud is also no slouch when it comes to driving Bar-On up the wall. "Netanyahu left you the coffers full," they shout at him at every opportunity. "Again Netanyahu," Bar-On snaps back, irritated. And the quarrel is sparked.
Sixty-flexibility
A week ago this column noted the concern of the organizers of Israel's 60th anniversary celebrations that a military operation in Gaza is liable to put a damper on the festivities that the minister in charge, Ruhama Avraham Balila, is planning for us. That concern prompted the minister to set up a meeting with Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi to find out what he is planning for the spring and what, in his opinion, the Palestinians are planning for us to mark the country's 60th birthday.
Of course, the chief of staff advised Avraham Balila to carry on with the plans as though there were no terrorism and no Qassam rockets, and said that at the same time he would plan the army's activity as though there were no celebrations, events or invited guests from abroad. But Ashkenazi also had another recommendation: to be flexible in planning the events, to be ready for last-minute changes. Call it 60-flexibility.
In the meantime, the preparations are continuing, and they are global. Yesterday, Avraham Balila returned from a visit to Moscow, and she will soon be off to Argentina and Brazil, in order to get the Jewish communities in those places to take part. Leave it to the minister: No community will be left out, and if she has to accumulate miles for the cause she will not balk at that.
The apprehension that a security event will interfere with the celebrations has seeped into the President's Residence. The President's Conference, organized by Shimon Peres, is scheduled to open on May 13. Two days of meetings, panel discussions and talks with the participation of hundreds of guests from around the world. Leaders expected to attend include President George Bush, who will arrive on May 14, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, foreign government ministers and Nobel Prize laureates. Some $7 million has already been collected for the event, which is being directed by Yisrael Maimon, a former cabinet secretary and now a private businessman. A source close to the president said that Peres, too, is very troubled about the fate of his conference. An operation in Gaza, Qassam rockets hitting Ashkelon, intensified terrorism and the President's Conference will have to make do with only the president.