Will you make up your mind?
Most ministers oppose Gaza truce, so why did none of them vote against it?
Roni Sofer YNET Published: 06.13.08, 00:40 / Israel Opinion
www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3555081,00.html

Israel's national security cabinet voted Wednesday in favor of a lull in the
Gaza Strip, even though the overwhelming majority of cabinet members don't
believe in such truce. They said there is no point in such ceasefire, yet
voted in favor of it, or at best abstained.

There are 12 ministers with cabinet voting rights; 11 of them have expressed
a decisive stance against the truce in the past. Their opinion was expressed
more than once or twice both behind closed doors and openly. They do not
believe that the Egyptian-mediated ceasefire will result in anything aside
from serious damage to Israel's security.

So how did they still vote in favor of continuing the abandonment of
southern communities to mortar, Qassam, and Grad attacks? Six of them voted
in favor of the truce: Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni, Ehud Barak, Avi Dichter,
Rafi Eitan, and Binyamin Ben-Eliezer. Four of them abstained: Haim Ramon,
Daniel Friedmann, Eli Yishai, and Shaul Mofaz. Nobody objected to the truce.

Mofaz's associates had the following message: "Nobody should be charging us
with indecision and lack of leadership." They said that the man who in 2004
led the move to assassinate 10 senior Hamas figures believes that "between a
major military operation in Gaza and a lull lies a large grey area that can
be used in order to pulverize the enemy."

When it came around to decision time in the cabinet, Mofaz expressed his
opinion for the protocol and abstained in the vote. As it turns out, Shaul
does not speak out against the defense establishment's position. That's why
he zigzagged again, that's why he abstained, that's why he did not vote like
his mind and his heart would have him vote.

Read the signs

Or how about Shas leader Eli Yishai, who in the past said that villages and
towns in Gaza should be flattened, and added that a lull would be a sign of
Israeli weakness? The same Yishai who called for intensive military
operations in order to protect southern residents, yet despite all chose to
abstain in Wednesday's vote. What does he say? How does he explain his
changing positions?

"I wasn't at peace with myself, not because of the lull, but rather, because
of Gilad Shalit. During days like this we should not emphasize the things
that split the nation," he told his associates to explain his failure to
object to the truce.

This is a government that says both "yes and no." A government that has not
read the writing on the wall, or the signs held up by protestors who arrived
from southern kibbutzim: "The State of Israel seeks leaders who are able to
make decisions."