Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

Shimon Peres: Growing delusional in his old age?

When the supposedly dovish Shimon Peres tells Ynetnews the world will ultimately have no choice but to go to war with Iran, you have to wonder why the world continues to see him as a distinguished elder statesman:

The conversation with Peres also touched on the hot security subjects at hand. Regarding the Iran crisis, Peres said: “In the end there will be no choice but war with Iran,” referring to the international military option against Iran’s nuclear program, not a war between Israel and Iran.

Often when I read such statements from Israeli politicians I have to ask myself: “What are they smokin’?” How in heaven can this guy believe that anyone except Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld and George Bush want this option? How can he not understand that this would be a demented policy option. Sure, it would solve a few problems for Israel by perhaps knocking out one of its more dangerous adversaries, but at what price? Eternal war between east and west? Perpetual conflict between Muslim and Christians and Jews?

Statements like Peres’ also give Israel a bad name here in the United States where no one but the Bush hardliners and Pentagon war planners are talking in such martial terms. The fact that Aipac and Israel are the ones beating the drums loudest for such an outcome looks bad to Americans who’re sick and tired of Mideast war and not eager to start another one.

Peres also issued another provocative, but slightly less delusional call for Kadima and Labor to unite as one party:

The Knesset is “as split as it was before. Therefore, the most proper thing to do now is unite Kadima and Labor.”

Peres…is convinced that such unity could rescue Israeli politics and stabilize the Knesset. Peres, however, made no comment about his rival Labor leader Amir Peretz.

Speaking to Ynet…Peres explained how he interprets the proposal: “What are the differences today between Labor and Kadima? Nothing. In the previous government there was a prominent different between the two large parties because of (Likud Chairman) Benjamin Netanyahu, whose economic policy neither Olmert nor Ariel Sharon liked, and certainly I didn’t either. But now? There is no difference. The right thing is for the two parties to unite.”

Again, the guy is in cloud cuckoo land: no difference between Kadima and Labor? What a laugh. What he means to say is that if HE were leading Labor instead of that Mizrahi-jerk Peretz that there’d be no differences between the two parties. But the problem with Peres previous leadership of Labor was precisely that there appeared to be no differences between Sharon and himself. This in turn gave Labor voters nothing, in effect, to vote for. And if the two political leaders were so similar, why cast a vote for Peres’ Labor when you could vote for Sharon directly?

The whole point of the leadership battle which Peres lost is that Labor voters rejected the latter’s vision of an eternal bedding-down with Sharon. So why should Labor be interested in what it rejected earlier?

Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, not someone I often agree with, in this case has things precisely right when he says:

“It’s too early to talk about such things. I understand Peres’ anxiety, because he knows that he is part of a party without any political structures, without roots and without any organization.”

“This party [Kadima] was only founded for the sake of the convergence, and there is nothing in it beyond the convergence. That’s why Peres talks about a future unity. These dreams are too early,” he added.

Peres is thinking about his political legacy and doesn’t want to be remembered for his betrayal of Labor before the last election. If he can engineer a realignment by which the two parties unite, then he can resume his grandfatherly image as uniter and peacemaker. I hope the Labor party doesn’t allow Shimon to assuage what may be a guilty conscience. It should not be the party’s job to disband merely so its former leader can sleep better at night. A union with Kadima would be profoundly ill-advised.

Ariga.com reports that Amir Peretz, the Labor Party leader, has given up his fight to become Finance Minister in the new Israeli government. Instead he has settled for the Defense portfolio. As Robert Rosenberg correctly points out, Defense is a double edged sword. It can make Peretz’s reputation–or break it.

The Israeli defense establishment is something akin to the Pentagon, only much more so. Naturally (and unfortunately), security issues are paramount in Israeli society. It’s almost like Israel has been living in a post 9/11 mentality for 60 years as opposed to our four. Therefore, the defense minister is always the second most powerful political position in the government. Its levers of power are enormous and its tentacles creep into every corner of the nation. Here is Rosenberg on Peretz’s dilemma:

Some regard the Peretz appointment as a ploy to ruin his career, expecting him to collapse under the burden of responsibility for the defense establishment, defeated by a domineering chief of staff, Halutz, who is considered very aggressive. But others hope that the civilian — and dovish — Peretz will bring a new outlook to the defense establishment, which by nature tends to believe that if force doesn’t solve the problem, more force will. Thus, Israel just this morning was lobbing hundreds of artillery shells into the Gaza Strip…Others hope to see Peretz use the position to cut the defense budget to help finance social welfare issues that Labor campaigned on. And yet others are pinning their hopes on Peretz to use his position as defense minister, meaning the sovereign [authority] in the occupied territories, to change IDF and Shin Bet policy toward the Palestinians — and the settlers, who are legally at least, subjects of the defense ministry. Peretz, for example, could cut off most of the government funding to the settlements, send troops to dismantle illegal outposts, and put an end to army protection for Jewish settler outlaws who don’t disguise their efforts to run Palestinians off their lands.

Personally, while I am a fan of Peretz’s and wish to see him succeed, I feel his new job is a minefield of the most dangerous kind. Certainly, he might succeed if he can rein in the IDF and intelligence apparatus and find a modus operandi with the Palestinians. But his ultimate success in the position, it seems to me, depends on his boss, the prime minister. How willing will Olmert be to engage in initiatives for peace? How much risk is he willing to take? If the answer is none or very little, then I don’t see how Peretz can win as Defense minister. Not to mention that Shimon Peres, Olmert’s number 2 (and member of the same coalition government) will constantly avail himself of opportunities to embarrass and humiliate his nemesis, who ’stole’ the party leadership from him.

But I’d like nothing more than to be proven wrong. A strong civilian hand reining in the excesses of the military establishment would be a most welcome and radical change from standard Israeli policy. Such a pragmatic hand on the levers of power would be a breath of fresh air.

Ehud Olmert and Amir Peretz announce Kadima-Labor coalition; is it me or do the two look not entirely comfortable with each other? (photo: Tomer Appelbaum/Baubau)

One moment Amir Peretz was negotiating with the Israeli rightist parties to form an odd left-right coalition in which he would be prime minister and the next he was shaking hands with Ehud Olmert, who called Labor his “senior partner” in the forthcoming Kadima-led coalition. One minute anonymous Kadima sources are whispering that Peretz is a light-weight not worthy of national leadership and the next they’re reportedly offering him the Defence portfolio. If your head’s spinning then welcome to the altered reality of Israeli politics where almost everything imaginable can happen and often does (and a few unimaginable things too).

Peretz reportedly really wanted the Finance portfolio to ensure he could execute his economic agenda guaranteeing an increased minimum wage and other policies to help those at or below the poverty line. But Kadima leaders are balking at entrusting the Israeli economy to a man with such “radical” views. I wonder why, though, they feel more comfortable offering him Defense. After all, his ideas about Israel’s military policy are probably no less unorthodox (at least compared to those of the political elite). Does Kadima expect that the sheer size and ocean liner inertia of the defense establishment will overmatch Peretz? If he is offered Defense and takes it, it will be interesting to see whether the military industrial complex bests him or the other way around. It’d be nice to think that Peretz may be able to put a lid on some of the worst excesses of the IDF and security services in their treatment of the Palestinians.

The other distressing factor in coalition negotiations is Olmert’s announcement during his joint press conference with Peretz that Avigdor Lieberman and Yisrael Beitenu are to be partners in the coalition. Lieberman is the politician who hatched the harebrained scheme to transfer sovereignty over hundreds of thousands of Arab Israelis to the PA in order to ensure somehow the continued demographic preponderance of Jews in Israeli society. Menachem Klein has derided this “plan” as lunacy and a sham, saying that at most 200,000 Israeli Arabs might live close enough to the Green Line to be eligible for “transfer.” Klein notes that this is barely more than the 150,000 East Jerusalem Palestinians whose homes have been annexed by Israel, but who have not been given Israeli citizenship or the right to vote. Presumably, if Israel refuses to return this territory to the PA, then these Palestinians will have to be given some form of Israeli citizenship and voting rights.

If I recall correctly, Lieberman is one of the ministers from Sharon’s cabinet who resigned rather than support the Gaza withdrawal. One wonders how he will react to the far more substantial planned West Bank withdrawal. In fact, an unnamed Labor source predicts in Haaretz that Lieberman will resign as soon as the “convergence plan” is implemented dragging the religious parties in the coalition with him. Or perhaps Lieberman believes he can enter government and modify and stall withdrawal? That wouldn’t be promising for Olmert. Another matter which should be worrying for Peretz is that the latter’s dovish views of the Israeli-Palestinians conflict will be in direct conflict with Lieberman’s hard right views. How can the two co-exist in the same cabinet?? Indeed, perhaps Olmert has engineered this deliberately hoping to muzzle Peretz’s efforts to promote Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.

I don’t see the Lieberman addition to the government as promising at all. It will just lead to more stasis on the Israeli-Palestinian front. We should expect no positive development in relations between the two peoples as long as Lieberman can put in his two cents at the highest political level. For the life of me I can’t understand why Olmert isn’t going for an alternative, and much more stable option: Kadima, Labor, Meretz, Pensioners and Shas for well over 70 seats. My guess is that Olmert worries that this coalition would be much more heavily weighted toward the left and he may not feel comfortable taking his government in this direction. After all, it would give Peretz much more room to lobby for strong action toward negotiations with the Palestinians. This must be something that Olmert is loathe to do. Hence the coalition he’s now proposing.

Robert Rosenberg reports the hopeful news that Kadima seems to be slipping in the polls. Just before Israel attacked the Jericho jail to kidnap Ahmed Saadat and his PFLP colleagues (accused of assassinating Rehavam Zeevi), Kadima was polling its highest numbers of the election campaign, 42 seats. Now, they’re showing a major erosion in the latest polls:

Six days to the elections and there is movement in the polls — perhaps not enough for an upset, but perhaps enough that when the dust settles, Kadima will have a much more difficult time forming a government than previously believed. A Haaretz poll showed Kadima slipping to 36 seats, Labor at 17 and the Likud sinking below 15 seats, to 14. A Jerusalem Post poll showed Kadima dropping to 34-35 seats, Labor rising from 18-19 to 20-21 and like the Haaretz poll, the Likud at 14 seats.

What is hopeful about this development is that it means that Olmert may be more likely to choose a center-left coalition than a center-right one. The more seats Labor wins the more likely this event might happen. Unfortunately, Labor’s campaign doesn’t seem to have won hearts and influenced voters though in this security obsessed climate it’s hard to say whether any Labor politician could have done better than Amir Peretz.

There is one ominous note–a big winner coming down to the wire seems to be the far-right Avigdor Lieberman of Yisrael Beitenu whose support has risen from 5 seats at the beginning of the campaign to the current 10. He’s angling for the Interior Ministry portfolio in the future government which means he gets the right to call the dogs off if they sniff around him (as they have been doing) a bit too vigorously. Such a development would be worrisome for the Israeli judicial system which he wants to “reform” (which in this case is not necessarily a good thing).