Coalition of the (un)willing - Haaretz

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Thu., January 24, 2008 Shvat 17, 5768

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Coalition of the (un)willing

By Yossi Verter

Tags: Israel, Avigdor Lieberman

A few days after Avigdor Lieberman was appointed minister for strategic affairs, in November 2006, Javier Solana, the European Union's representative for foreign affairs, visited Israel and rushed to meet with the new minister. Afterward, he met with a group of Israeli public figures. One of them asked Solana whether, after having met Lieberman, he had gained the impression that Israel's strategic problems were about to be resolved. I am afraid, Solana replied, that they have just begun.

Solana was wrong. Lieberman gave Prime Minister Ehud Olmert 14 months of political calm and coalition stability. He helped him get through the first Winograd Committee report on the management of the Second Lebanon War and to pass two budgets in the Knesset, enabled him to get to the Annapolis conference safely despite the catcalls from the right wing, and contributed immeasurably to strengthening Olmert's image as a superb politician and a capable manager.

When one recalls the hysteria that seized left-wing circles when Lieberman was brought into the government three months after the 2006 war, the only possible reaction is to guffaw. Lieberman joined Olmert for a minimal price, sentenced opposition leader Likud MK Benjamin Netanyahu to opposition barrenness, and all told, behaved in an impeccable and businesslike manner. His contribution to the eradication of the strategic threats facing Israel remains unknown.

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Shortly after Wednesday's press conference, at which he announced his resignation from the government, the ministerial black Mercedes awaited the minister (a cabinet member's resignation comes into effect 48 hours after it is submitted to the prime minister), door open, bodyguard at the ready, at the entrance to the Knesset parking lot. Destination: a tennis court somewhere in Jerusalem. When he is not wearing his strategic-threats suit, he can often be found on the court, venting his energies.

After the press conference, at which he stated that the Arab MKs Ahmad Tibi and Mohammad Barakeh are worse than exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshal and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, Lieberman and Barakeh stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the battery of cameras and reporters in the Knesset and gave interviews - Lieberman in Russian, Barakeh in Arabic. They need each other like they need air to breathe. Each of them creates a wonderful agenda for the other.

"You journalists are always looking for the mysterious," Lieberman said. "It is impossible to be more transparent than I am. I read about the 'Lieberman enigma.' What enigma? On October 28, we presented a document to Olmert entitled 'Red Lines.' I made it clear that we would not stay in the government if the core issues [with the Palestinians] came up for discussion, and that is how I acted. Nothing is more transparent than that.

"All those who shouted at us to resign and made all kinds of noise are people who either never voted, and never will vote, for Yisrael Beiteinu. They are not relevant and I pay them no mind," he says, referring to the right wing. "You journalists are incapable of understanding that someone can behave contrary to his electoral interests. There is an overwhelming majority in Yisrael Beiteinu that opposes our leaving the government. Nevertheless, we left."

He has only good things to say about Olmert. "I worked with several prime ministers. Olmert is the most businesslike, honest and fair. He is a far better prime minister than what the public perceives him to be. In terms of strategic threats, his government did far more than all previous governments. I am not talking about what I did. The credit belongs above all to the prime minister. He deserves a great deal of credit. History will show that."

Their meeting last Tuesday was a good one. They truly like each other and hold each other in high regard. Lieberman did not ask for a life rope, and Olmert did not offer one. On the contrary. "What do you think," Olmert said to Lieberman, "that I can convene a conference at Annapolis, drag to it the president of the United States and representatives from 40 countries, including Arab countries, declare to the whole world that I intend to discuss all the issues [with the Palestinians] and get an agreement within a year, and then spit in everyone's face and say I didn't mean it?" Lieberman didn't even argue.

It is hard to remember Lieberman heaping such praise on anyone else in the political arena. Certainly not on Netanyahu, who could stand to gain the most in the wake of Yisrael Beiteinu's departure from the coalition. It may yet turn out that just as Lieberman came to Olmert's rescue in November 2006, after the Second Lebanon War, he may have crowned Netanyahu prime minister by resigning in January 2008.

What is evident, however, is that the clear skies of the Olmert coalition are a thing of the past. The prime minister still has 67 MKs, but only on paper. In practice, he heads a minority government, because there are two or three rebels in his party, Kadima, an additional two or three in the Pensioners' Party and another two or three in Labor. This means that the 67 MKs in the present coalition are equivalent to what used to be, in previous coalitions, 61 MKs. In the past it was possible to function with a narrow majority, because there was coalition discipline and there were norms of behavior. These days, every backbencher thinks he is a potential prime minister. If 2005 was the year of the disengagement and the "big bang" (the formation of the centrist Kadima party) in Israeli politics, 2006 was an election year and the year of the Second Lebanon War, and 2007 was Olmert's survival year, then 2008 will be a turbulent political year. As Olmert told a gathering of all past cabinet secretaries, "It won't be boring here in the year ahead."

Barak holds the key

If until recently Ehud Barak, the Labor Party leader, spoke only about "responsibility" and "the good of the country" as values that will guide his behavior in the wake of the January 30 publication of the Winograd Committee's final report on the management of the Second Lebanon War, now he has added the term "accountability." It is in this flexible space, between the good of the country and the prime minister's obligation to bear responsibility for failure, that Barak will have to maneuver in the coming weeks.

In conversations with political confidants, Barak talks about several operative options: resigning from the government, calling for Olmert's replacement, voting to dissolve the Knesset, a general statement about the need to advance elections - and in each case, his actions will be dependent on the report itself. The harsher the report, the harsher will be the action it generates. Barak will make his decision in the days following the report's publication, and he is advising all political analysts and speculators not to second-guess him.

If Barak were the one writing the report, he would come up with wording that would weaken Olmert but allow the two of them to stay where they are, while at the same time bolstering Barak's status as a security authority and increasing Olmert's dependence on him. Barak believes that 2008 should not be an election year. There are too many challenges and missions: Iran, Gaza, Hezbollah, negotiations with the Palestinians. (There are also polls that show lethal results for Barak in early elections, but that he does not mention.) On the other hand, if things lurch out of control, the media calls on Olmert to resign, and the public protest is sweeping and authentic, Barak may be left with no choice.

Lieberman's resignation will not affect what Barak does or does not do after January 30. Barak heard with a forgiving smile his fellow cabinet minister - and confidant - Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, assert in a radio interview that Lieberman's exit leaves Labor in the government "for the sake of the diplomatic process." From Ben-Eliezer's point of view, everything justifies Labor's remaining in the coalition.

As far as Barak is concerned, the fact that the minister for strategic threats has resigned will streamline the work in that arena. There were matters relating to strategic threats that Lieberman hardly had anything to do with, Barak said recently in closed conversations.

Someone suggested to Barak that he ask Olmert to give the strategic threats portfolio to Ami Ayalon, Labor's minister without portfolio. Barak almost choked. He views the portfolio as a concoction. A lot of hot air. Just like the other goodies in the sphere of intelligence, security and strategy that Olmert doled out generously to ministers in his party: responsibility for the strategic dialogue with Washington (Shaul Mofaz), responsibility for the secret services (Meir Sheetrit), responsibility for the security fence and the settler outposts (Haim Ramon). In a normal government, Barak maintains, there would be no such weird nonsense. Everything has to be in the hands of two people: the prime minister and the defense minister.

The key to everything that happens here in the year ahead is held by Barak. Olmert doesn't like that, and the truth is that neither does Barak. People close to Olmert accuse Barak of constantly sticking his nose into Kadima's internal affairs, in the form of meetings and conversations he holds with MKs and ministers from the ruling party. To which Barak says, in a response that will not allay Olmert's suspicions: "I meet with members from all factions of the House, including Kadima, all the time, and maintain an ongoing connection with them. It's good to have a dialogue between elected representatives from all the parties." Barak also notes, and justly so, that Olmert meets regularly with ministers and MKs from Labor and that he, Barak, has no problem with that.

Two weeks before the report's publication, the tension and nervousness are apparent on the faces of everyone in the Prime Minister's Bureau. The connection between Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni troubles them a great deal, as does the third person on this axis: the advertising man Reuven Adler. Adler maintains close ties with both Livni and Barak, his neighbor in the luxury residential tower in Tel Aviv in which they both live. Olmert's circles believe Adler will play an important role in the decisions to be made by Barak and Livni, come judgment day.

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