Weekly Commentary: Olmert Team - Series of Screw Ups

Dr. Aaron Lerner Date: 3 July 2008

We screwed up in the negotiations with Hezbollah and as a result now have a
deal on the table to trade a live terrorist for dead Israelis. Since the
Israelis are dead it would have been a nice opportunity to finally stand our
ground. But it's too late. So let's approve the deal.

That's basically what Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told his Cabinet last
Sunday in his rambling remarks.

Prepared remarks he and his team saw fit to make available to the public
both in Hebrew and English on the Prime Minister's website.

But why stop there?

Why not come clean over the ceasefire with Hamas?

We screwed up in the negotiations of the ceasefire with Hamas and as a
result found ourselves with a deal that set literally no restrictions on
Hamas activities within the Gaza Strip to strengthen their military machine
nor any obligation on their part to act against the ongoing smuggling of
weapons, explosives and terrorists into Gaza. The fiasco of the collapse of
the Gaza-Egypt border fence created an opportunity to propose concrete
solutions to address the challenge of this very porous border - including
the relatively low cost idea of transferring the residents near the border
(with appropriate compensation) in order to facilitate the bulldozing of a
sterile border zone that would make tunnel building both prohibitively
expensive and generate a readily detectable footprint of activity. But we
didn't.

Ultimately, our desire to avoid conflict with Egypt rather than the merits
of the arrangements forced us to accept the deal.

It is true that the same desire to avoid conflict with Egypt that got us to
accept this terrible deal also serves to prevent us from seriously
campaigning for Egypt to stop the smuggling (with unrestricted sea based
Egypt-Gaza smuggling supplementing the already massive tunnel based
movement) but, them's the breaks. We screwed up.

We screwed up in our diplomatic and other activities relating to conditions
in Lebanon after the Second Lebanon War. Part of the problem was that, for
purposes of domestic politics, it was important for us to claim that the UN
Security Council Resolution that ostensibly ended that war was an
achievement rather than yet another failure. Complaining too vocally about
the post-war Hezbollah build up would have played into the hands of the real
enemy (read: Binyamin Netanyahu). We screwed up.

We screwed up in agreeing to talks with Syria under Turkish auspices. The
last thing we need is to put ourselves into a situation that we
unnecessarily embarrass or disappoint regional superpower Turkey - so now
this extraneous consideration may very well dictate the Israeli concessions
required to maintain a pace and progress in the negotiations that the Turks
find satisfactory. We screwed up.

We screwed up in failing to come to the table with our own proposed schedule
of tangible, observable and quantifiable Palestinian security performance
goals. Instead we have a PA security force in the West Bank that might be
making some progress in enforcing domestic order but is not seriously
involved in fighting terror. In point of fact, its goal is to integrate
rather than neutralize the gunmen. We screwed up.

And it goes on.

Down the line the Olmert team has screwed up.

And these screw ups can have a devastatingly dangerous cumulative effect.

When will this nightmare end?

Unfortunately, it appears that there are not enough MKs in the Knesset
willing to risk their meal ticket.

This leaves indictment as the quick and easy was to stop this ongoing farce.

After the cross examination of Talansky in a few weeks, AG Mazuz could, if
he wanted to, issue a one count indictment with an option to add more later.

But would Mazuz do it? Would he pull the plug on a prime minister
negotiating concessions to the Arabs?

I fervently hope that the answer is yes.

But given AG Mazuz's track record, I wouldn't bet on it.

Dr. Aaron Lerner, Director IMRA (Independent Media Review & Analysis)
(Mail POB 982 Kfar Sava)
Tel 972-9-7604719/Fax 972-3-7255730
INTERNET ADDRESS: imra@netvision.net.il
Website: http://www.imra.org.il