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Jewish World Review August 1, 2008 /29 Tamuz 5768 Why Olmert — finally — did it By Caroline B. Glick
Olmert did not actually resign from office in the normal sense of the term.
That is, he's not planning to leave office any time soon. What Olmert did
was force Israel into a long period of governmental instability.
According to Israel's elections law, when a prime minister announces his
resignation, his government is immediately transformed into a transition
government that will remain in power until either Olmert's successor forms a
governing coalition or until the winner of the next general elections forms
a governing coalition. If Olmert's successor forms a new governing coalition
after the Sept. 17 primary, Israelis won't go to the polls until March 2010.
But if Olmert's replacement as Kadima head is unable to form a coalition,
Israel will have general elections by March 2009 at the latest. In the
latter scenario, Olmert's transition government will remain in power until
the winners of those elections form a governing coalition. And that could
take up to three more months.
So far from leaving office anytime soon, Olmert will remain in power at
least three more months and for as long as ten months.
Olmert's non-resignation resignation speech was filled with protestations of
patriotism. But it is hard to see how his announcement served the national
interest. If Olmert had wanted to do what is best for the country, then he
would have announced that his resignation was effective immediately. This
would have set the course for general elections in November.
In the interim, and in light of the intensifying security crisis with Iran,
a caretaker government could have been formed that could have encompassed
all willing Zionist parties represented in the Knesset. If such a government
were formed, Israel could have attacked Iran's nuclear installations with
the full backing of the Knesset and the people. The political cost of such a
vital operation would have been borne equally by all of Israel's political
leaders and so the in a sense, it would have been borne by no one. Under
such circumstances, Israel's political leaders would have been able to
concern themselves only with Israel's survival as they made their best
decisions on how to prevent the ayatollahs from acquiring nuclear weapons.
But rather than enable Israel to unite in the face of a threat to its
existence, Olmert opted for continued instability, continued uncertainly and
a continuation of the polarized status quo which leaves him in office and
leaves Israel strategically hamstrung at the hands of a governing coalition
that the nation does not want and does not trust. And this situation could
easily last for nearly a year.
There are two possible explanations for Olmert's behavior. First, it is
possible, as some commentators have noted, that by announcing his decision
not to seek reelection in Kadima's leadership primary - and lose
overwhelmingly by all accounts - Olmert may be trying to convince the police
investigators to allow him to leave office in his own car and not in the
back of a paddy wagon. There is a precedent for such a move. Late president
Ezer Weitzman resigned from office in 2000 in exchange for an end to the
criminal probe against him. And the probe against Weitzman - which centered
on cash transfers in excess of $540,000 which he received over an extended
period from Edward Sarousi, a French businessman - was similar to the sixth
of seven ongoing probes against Olmert, where he is being investigated for
cash transfers he received from US businessman Morris Talansky.
The other possibility is that Olmert is playing his familiar game of buying
time. Buying time has been the enduring theme of his tenure in office.
After Olmert led Israel to defeat in the Second Lebanon War two years ago,
Olmert staved off calls for his resignation by appointing the Winograd
Commission to study his failures. Eight months later, the Winograd
Commission issued its interim report where it concluded that Olmert had
failed in his stewardship of the country during the war. In the face of the
public outcry that followed, Olmert bought himself another eight months by
insisting on waiting until the commission issued its final report.
As the criminal probes against him rose to the top of the national agenda in
late April with the revelation that Olmert had accepted cash-stuffed
envelops from Talansky for a decade, Olmert bought himself another four
months by pledging to resign if indicted. And now, of course, he has bought
himself at least three more months, and perhaps up to eleven months more in
power. And who knows what unanticipated crisis or windfall may intervene in
the meantime and add another few months to his lifespan as prime minister?
In his handling of all of these crises, the good of the country has not been
Olmert's primary concern. Indeed, it is far from clear that he ever
considered the impact his actions would have on Israel at all. Rather, from
crisis to crisis, from one stalling tactic to the next, Olmert has been
guided by his single-minded desire to remain in office. And this is not
surprising.
Olmert's patent lack of shame is not the only reason that Israel's best
interests haven't factored into Olmert's calculations. By placing his
personal interests above the national interest, Olmert was loyally
reflecting the character of his party. Winning and maintaining power for
power's sake irrespective of the national interest and ideological
principles were the purposes for which Kadima was founded by former premier
Ariel Sharon.
Sharon founded Kadima as a self-consciously post-ideological party. And as
Kadima's first prime minister, Olmert is Israel's first post-ideological
premier.
Olmert and Kadima are the direct consequences of Sharon's decision to turn
his back on his party, and on the ideology that brought him into office in
2003 in favor of clinging to power for power's sake. To remain in office
amidst two serious criminal probes, Sharon betrayed his ideological camp and
Israel's national security interests. This he did by implementing the
discredited radical leftist policy championed by Israel's media and legal
fraternity of withdrawing all Israeli military personnel and civilians from
the Gaza Strip and transferring control of the area to Fatah, Hamas and
Islamic Jihad terror control.
Sharon, Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and their political consultants
presented Kadima's rejection of ideology as its chief selling point. By not
being committed to either left wing or right wing ideals, they assured us
that Kadima would always do the right thing for the country.
But the opposite occurred. Without the benefit of ideology to guide them,
Kadima's leaders have been led by nothing more than their personal
interests. And their primary interest is not to do what is best for the
country irrespective of ideology. Their primary interest is to maintain and
expand their power for as long as possible.
To maintain and expand their power, Kadima's leaders from Olmert to the
party's last back-bencher, have sought to align their policies with the
nation's shifting moods. The nation's mood swings from left to right are
always followed by sharp changes in Kadima's policies.
With the nation in a left leaning mood in the run-up to the last elections,
Kadima announced its plan to give Judea and Samaria to terrorists from Fatah
and Hamas. Distinguishing their party from the radical left, which shares
their plan, Kadima's leaders explained that the party sought to place
Israel's major urban centers in Palestinian rocket range not in the interest
of peace - as the leftist ideologues would have it — but in the interest of
the hardnosed "demographic" aim of putting all the country's Jews in one
concentrated area.
Before the nation had an opportunity to fully understand what Kadima's
"convergence" plan entailed, Israel's body politic shifted to the right in
June 2006 after the Palestinians attacked an IDF post near Gaza, and
kidnapped Cpl. Gilad Schalit. Two weeks later it shifted further to the
right when Hizbullah carried out a nearly identical attack along the border
with Lebanon and abducted reservists Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser.
Noticing the public's rightward shift, Olmert and his colleagues followed
immediately. When Olmert launched the Second Lebanon War, he sounded
downright Churchillian as he promised the nation nothing less than the total
defeat of Hizbullah and the return of our hostage servicemen.
But then, when Olmert's bombast was confronted with the hard reality of war,
Olmert lost interest in being a right winger. And so he fought the war like
a radical leftist and accepted humiliating defeat. Ever since then, Kadima
has tacked to the right and then to the left with no guiding rationale other
than the morning's headlines, the weekend's opinion polls, and the threats
of its right wing and left wing coalition partners.
In the meantime, the actual threats arrayed against Israel as a whole have
become more acute and more fateful. But Olmert and his colleagues can't be
bothered to deal with them. They are too busy. Deciding who you are each day
anew on the basis of the morning radio broadcasts is a time-consuming
venture. And their solitary aim remains constant throughout. They just want
to stay in power for another day, another week or with a little luck, for a
few more months.
This is the sad and desperate face of post-ideological politics. While as
prime ministers, left-wing leaders like Defense Minister Ehud Barak and
President Shimon Peres could only make mistakes in one direction,
post-ideological leaders like Olmert and his colleagues in Kadima can and do
make mistakes in all directions.
From 1977 when Likud first rose to power until 2006 when Kadima formed the
government, all of Israel's elections revolved around contrasting
ideologies. For 29 years, voters were required to choose which side of the
ideological divide they preferred. And making choices isn't easy. Both sides
seem to have something to offer.
Then Kadima entered Israel's political stage dead on center and offered
voters a way to avoid making a decision. They professed to be all things to
all people.
But of course, no one and no political party can be all things to all
people. And since Kadima's leaders won't choose whose side they are on for
longer than opinion polls stay constant, their party has been nothing to all
people.
Here it bears noting that Olmert's slow, meandering exit from office against
the backdrop of growing dangers is a fitting end to this sad chapter in
Israel's history. For when a government of nothings is running the show,
nothing takes precedent over all things - even the most important things.
It can only be hoped that when the next elections take place, Israeli voters
will have learned the lesson of Kadima. Whether we choose the right
ideological camp or the wrong one to lead us, we cannot evade our
responsibility of making a choice.
JWR contributor Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post. Comment by clicking here.
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