Defense Minister Amir Peretz chalked up a small victory this week: He managed to cause a fissure in the "policy of restraint" being exercised by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in the wake of the firing of Qassams from Gaza. In the security consultation on Wednesday morning, the day after the wounding of two teenaged boys in Sderot by the Palestinian rocket, Olmert gave his approval to the Israel Defense Forces to strike at the Qassam launching units, but only if they are discovered immediately after the launching.

That was less than what the defense establishment requested, but Olmert understood that he had to give the IDF some slack in order to repel the increasing criticism of his restraint. When he was told about the boys' injury from the Qassam, he immediately decided to allow the strikes at the Palestinian launching units. He waited until morning in order to announce the new policy.

Peretz succeeded in bending Olmert a little, as he also did during the last week of the war in Lebanon this summer, when he pushed for a major ground operation. As then, this time too the defense minister conducted a political and media campaign, and awaited the rocket that would cause the collapse of Olmert's ability to resist. Peretz's modest victory testifies to the depth of the crisis in Israel's political and defense leadership. When the defense minister speaks to the prime minister via the newspaper headlines, it is clear that they don't speak through any other channel. An improper, not to say dangerous situation in a country at war.

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Peretz spoke openly this week about his disconnect from Olmert, and in the Prime Minister's Office they are saying that their relationship is "irreparable." The breaking point was the phone conversation between Peretz and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) about a month and a half ago. Olmert had the impression that Peretz had lied to him in his report of the conversation, when Peretz claimed that Abbas had contacted him. Since then Olmert has lost his confidence in the defense minister, whom he held in disdain even before that. Around him they snicker at every declaration by Peretz, and those participating in the security consultations two days ago sensed the hostility and alienation between them. When Peretz spoke Olmert made a show of not listening, instead writing notes to Cabinet Secretary Israel Maimon. The gaps between their positions were small, but each of them behaved as though the other was trying to undermine him.

Security consultations with large number of participants are not a forum for formulating policy, but rather for creating a consensus surrounding the decision already taken. That was also the case during the terms of Olmert's predecessors. But they made sure to tie up the ends ahead of time, in preparatory talks. Olmert behaves differently. He consults very little, and then the quarrels erupt in the broader discussions. That is his style: determined, with a short fuse. He does not have the patience to hear the same story from several people and to exhaust them with long conversations, as Ariel Sharon used to do. Before meeting with Abbas on Saturday night, Olmert updated Peretz, Chief of Staff Dan Halutz and several other ministers about the upcoming meeting. He did not ask them what he should say to Abbas. Olmert also decided alone and quickly about the cease fire in Gaza about five weeks ago. Such decisions end either with a citation or a demotion.

The White House. Courage

Former U.S. President Gerald Ford, who died this week at a ripe old age, made the most important decision of his candidacy alone and quickly. Only a handful of his associates knew about it, and he sent it out to the world one Sunday, only a few weeks after taking office. Ford decided that his predecessor Richard Nixon, would be pardoned for his behavior in the Watergate affair, a decision that may have led to Ford's defeat in the 1976 elections, by a very small margin, to Jimmy Carter.

Ford was attacked at the time on the right and the left for his decision, a mirror image of the praise he received from the many who eulogized him this week in the U.S. capital. In recognition of this act, few years ago he received the Profiles in Courage award distributed by the library of the late president John F. Kennedy. Kennedy was a member of the rival Democratic Party, and Senator Ted Kennedy, who was one of his attackers, admitted that Ford's decision at the time was correct.

In a television interview, Ford said that courage means sticking to your convictions when you know the right thing to do. One of Olmert's associates tried to claim this week that that is exactly how we should treat Olmert's decision not to be tempted by the peace feelers coming from Syria, in spite of the price that he is liable to pay for it in public opinion in the short term.

The Americans have also noticed these feelers, but have not changed their minds: Negotiations with Syria, under the present circumstances, would damage their Middle East policy. If Israel asks to turn to such a channel - and Olmert insists that that is not his intention - they will probably refuse. They understand the public relations distress of the prime minister, but that does not change their assessment that Syrian President Bashar Assad is not interested in peace, but only in negotiations.

Under these circumstances, the question of public pressure on the Israeli prime minister, as oppressive as it may be, stands opposite questions that are central to the American interest: Iraq, Lebanon, terror, radicalism. "We have to remember," remarked a senior Israeli official this week, "that the situation today is not what it was in the 1990s. Then the Middle East was a small piece of the American puzzle, and we could ask the Americans to give in when there was a place where they did not have a vital interest and Israel did. Today Olmert and Bush are looking at the same map."

Bush, like many presidents before him, has not yet accepted the possibility that he won't bring peace between Israel and its neighbors. He really wants to do so, as does his Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, but time is not on their side, and every Qassam pushes back the clock. Anyone reading the history of Ford's presidency this week could have found an echo of the present situation, as well as quite a number of promises of the type that Bush too has scattered more than once, and which have yet to be fulfilled.

Ford, like Bush at present, was a president whose days were numbered, and who was also facing a weak Israeli prime minister who clashed constantly with his defense minister; at the time it was Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, today it is Olmert and Peretz. Ford, like Bush, had a secretary of state who was the strongest member of the cabinet and the most influential in terms of foreign policy - then Henry Kissinger, today Rice. Of the two holdovers from the Ford administration, Vice President Richard Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, only one still remains in the Bush administration. With Ford, Rumsfeld succeeded in undermining Kissinger's status, with Bush, Kissinger's indirect disciple Rice has succeeded in undermining Rumsfeld's status.

In one of his first speeches to Congress, Ford promised to free America from dependence on Arab oil. At the time there was a motive - the boycott that followed the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Today there is also a motive. But meanwhile the Arabs are the same Arabs, the sea of oil is the same sea, and the dependence is the same dependence. The president, who is not the same president, will share with his predecessor the lesson learned by almost all his predecessors, from Harry S. Truman to Bill Clinton: The situation in the Middle East is determined on the ground and not in the White House.

The Foreign Ministry. Policy

That is precisely the reason for the frustration in the U.S. and Israeli administrations. It is hard to envy Olmert and Bush in their dealings with the Palestinian arena. There are no more magic solutions for the disintegrating PA, such as "disengagement" and "convergence." Nor are there military wonder drugs that will destroy Hamas and Islamic Jihad and stop the shower of Qassams. They can only wait for the Palestinians to end their power struggles and give rise to a new and centralized leadership, and to hope that their internal wars will not be translated into a new wave of terror in Israel.

The U.S. Defense Department understands this situation, and nevertheless, the officials are doing everything possible in an attempt to produce a shred of new hope that will help to move a diplomatic process forward. In the middle of next month Rice will be coming to visit the region, and those involved are already busy lowering expectations. Real preparatory talks for the visit have yet to begin, and the schedule is very crowded. It is hard to find time to think about the Israeli-Palestinian arena with the proper seriousness.

Rice does not want to embark on the visit before President Bush delivers his promised speech that will outline the new American policy in Iraq. That will happen at the beginning of January, and until then Rice is busy mainly with that. Towards the end of the month another important event awaits the president: the State of the Union message in Congress. Bush is preparing it with the proper caution, mainly in light of the fact that this is his first appearance before the Congress that is colored with the blue of the Democratic Party. Rice will want to be present at the speech, of course, but she also wants to influence its contents from up close. In other words, the second half of the month is also full. Between one event and the other, Olmert is going on a visit to China and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni will be visiting Japan. What remains in the middle will be freed for Rice's Middle East visit, some time between January 12 and January 18.

In the absence of a clear plan, once again we are hearing half stories and fragmentary truths that signal confusion rather than a breakthrough. The latest of them deal with the possibility that the U.S. will ask to skip over the first stage of the "road map" (eradicating terror) straight to the second stage (a Palestinian state within temporary borders). An Israeli official who was asked about it this week said that he doesn't lose sleep when he hears these stories. He doesn't think that the Americans are planning a maneuver for Israel. In any case, it's an unrealistic idea.

The real dilemma for both the Israelis and the Americans relates to more complex questions: one, is it possible to begin the discussion but not the implementation of the second stage of the map even before the first stage has been completed. The second, whether it is a good idea to skip a stage in the road map - but the second stage rather than the first. In other words, to move straight from the implementation of the first stage to negotiations over the final status agreement. Livni is tending is that direction in the diplomatic initiative she announced this week in an interview with Haaretz. But even she does not have an answer for the most important question: Let's say she achieves an agreement with Abbas and his people, who will implement it? Who will guarantee that the Qassams won't fall on Tel Aviv after the IDF comes down from the hills to the line of the separation fence?

Until these issues are resolved, and until we discover whether PA President Abbas is capable of meeting the expectations pinned on him, Olmert is working on the achieving maximum understanding with the international community. He is trying to demonstrate that he is "strengthening Abbas" in order to score points in Washington, Europe, Cairo and Amman. That is the motivation for the "gestures" and for the idea of releasing a handful of prisoners prior to the Muslim Eid al Adha (Festival of the Sacrifice).

On Wednesday even this effort ran aground unnecessarily and foolishly, when the European Union and the U.S. administration hastened to condemn an Israeli decision to settle families of evacuees from Gaza in an abandoned settlement in the Jordan Valley. The explanations that Israel was forced to send quickly to the administration could not soften the blow to its image. Perhaps it would have been better to explain ahead of time, or to give up the idea. Peretz, who calls himself "the head of the peace camp," got entangled in building a new settlement beyond the fence. Had it been a right-wing minister, he could have been suspected of ideology. In the case of Peretz it is apparently at attempt to please everyone, including the extremist settlers, without considering the international consequences of such a step.

The General Staff. Policy

On the issue of removing the roadblocks, Olmert also refrained from a preliminary consultation. First he promised Abbas, afterwards he encountered a client more stubborn than he, the head of Central Command Yair Naveh, who torpedoed the decision. If Olmert decided to bring Naveh an unwelcome gift, he got it back in spades. Olmert does not enjoy the awe, even the degree of fear, that the generals felt for Sharon. They won't surrender to his wishes and are not enthusiastic about his ability to decide without consulting with them.

In the absence of IDF awe, the prime minister relies, in his conduct with the Palestinians, on the personal rivalries in the defense leadership, and mainly on the ongoing conflict between Chief of Staff Dan Halutz and the head of the Shin Bet security services, Yuval Diskin. With them the prime minister can divide and conquer.

This week he preferred the professional backing of Diskin, who was opposed to the cessation of the restraint policy and the renewal of belligerent military activity in Gaza. But the defense establishment says that he doesn't seriously consult even with Diskin and Halutz. In Olmert's bureau they explain that they see no need to invite all the senior members of the defense establishment to every discussion. His military secretary, Major General Gadi Shamni, participates in all the consultations and presents the views of the army and the intelligence community.

In any case, even in the army there are various nuances: The chief of staff is much more attentive to the needs of the political leadership than are the heads of the regional commands. Halutz is willing to explain, even in public, that the prime minister has "broader considerations," and believes that accumulating international credit under the aegis of the present policy of restraint will grant legitimacy to Israel when the time comes for the major operation in Gaza. The military leadership has no doubt that the conflict with Hamas is steadily approaching.

In spite of the public sense of despondency and the Qassams, the past week was one of Olmert's most successful. Once again he was revealed as one of the best political operators Israel has ever known, when he passed the 2007 Budget easily and without coalition crises. In spite of the fact that he heads a shrunken ruling party, which many people think will disappear by the next elections, Olmert has put together a survival coalition that his predecessors could only dream about.

He is paying the price by having his hands tied politically, but circumstances are playing into his hands: There are no real pressures on him, either internal or external, to embark on daring diplomatic steps. The kisses he pasted on Abu Mazen photograph work well all over the world and do not anger the right; his refusal to negotiate with Syria does not ignite a fire on the left. This way he's in the middle.

In hindsight it seems that the strongest reinforcement for Olmert's survival is being provided by the Winograd Committee, in its decision to conduct its discussions behind closed doors. There are no leaks from the committee, at least for the time being, and therefore there are no juicy headlines about an exchange of accusations and mutual backstabbing among the witnesses. It's enough to see what the military investigations about the war in Lebanon have done to undermine the status of the chief of staff, in order to understand what Olmert has been spared. His success in rejecting the pressures for establishing a state commission of inquiry saved him from a major problem.