Predictably, it’s beginning to hit the fan in Israel.

As Israelis struggle to assimilate the results of their invasion of Lebanon, they’re realizing that there is no sense in which their war of choice can be called a success. Like the US invasion of Iraq, it has decreased rather than increased their security.

But Israel differs from the US in that its citizens are openly disgusted with their leaders and are attacking them with whatever tools are at hand. In this case, the easiest tools to grab are corruption investigations.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is under investigation for having bought a house worth $1.6–1.8 million for $1.2 million.

There is another suspicion: The house the Olmerts bought had been earmarked for preservation. Converting a house marked for preservation into a house that can be torn down, rebuilt or expanded requires special and irregular permits from the Jerusalem municipality. There is evidence to support the suspicion that Olmert’s confidants helped the contractor who sold Olmert the house obtain those irregular permits. If this is the case, the real estate deal was probably a bribery deal. The prime minister and his wife will be questioned about that.

And:

It is very likely that the document will leave Attorney General Menachem Mazuz with no choice but to open a criminal inquiry against the prime minister and his wife.

It is highly doubtful that Olmert could even temporarily survive such a police probe considering the present public mood. Chances are that within about two months he will no longer be Israel’s prime minister.

Then, of course, there’s the Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, the pilot whose overestimation of the power of his own air forces to force a surrender by Hezbollah caused so much destruction in Lebanon and failed so utterly.

According to the report, three hours after Hezbollah attacked an IDF patrol and abducted two soldiers, at 12 P.M., Halutz called his investment adviser at the Bank Leumi branch on Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv and ordered him to sell the shares in his investment portfolio, worth NIS 120,000. Over the next two days the value of the stock in the Tel Aviv stock exchange lost 8.3 percent of its value.

During the hours that the chief of staff was avoiding financial losses, he was also participating in meetings with the General Staff and the defense minister, in which he recommended a heavy air assault against Lebanon, resulting in an escalation and a full scale war between Israel and Hezbollah.

Halutz told Maariv that “one cannot link [the sale of the stock] with the war. Such a connection is fantastic. At that time I did not think and did not expect that war would occur.”

Fantastic? Fantastically obvious, is what. Does he really think anyone will believe that as he was recommending a heavy air assault he was not expecting war?

The affair raised a genuine storm in the IDF. Senior General Staff officers and officers in combat units alike expressed severe criticism at Halutz’s conduct. They said it was a reflection of lack of understanding of what was was going on in the war.

The officers said Halutz now faces a “breach of confidence” in his leadership and they expressed doubts in his ability to correct the problem.

The officers added that it would be difficult for Halutz to look veterans of the war in the eyes, and meet families who lost sons in the war.

“His priorities are distorted,” they said.

As are his government’s. Fortunately for his country, some of his fellow citizens are questioning the Israeli strategy.

I am trying to recall when I last saw Israeli leaders talking with Arab leaders about peace, and finding it hard to remember. In recent years, our compulsive tendency to talk to ourselves about an agreement with the Arabs has been strengthening, as though the real conflict in the Middle East were between the right and the left. The fruitless discussions between these two tired bodies have had two goals: to neutralize any possibility of change and to freeze the reality on the ground, for fear that any step toward peace will ignite a domestic war among the Jews. And if we are already fated to go to war, say our architects to themselves, it is better to have a war against the Arabs. It is torturous to think that had similar diplomatic energy been invested vis-a-vis Palestinian leaders, Lebanese leaders and Syrian leaders, perhaps everything would look different. Perhaps we would even be living in peace with them.

Is it possible that the miserable war in Lebanon and the endless slaughter in Gaza are an outcome of the lack of willingness to talk with our neighbors? When was the last time we tried to talk to the Palestinians about their future and about our future? When was the last time we sent out probes to the Lebanese about signing a peace agreement with them? When was the last time we tried to renew the truncated negotiations with the Syrians about the possibility of arriving at a peace agreement?

Posted by Chuck Dupree at August 17, 2006 10:59 AM

Email this entry to:


Your email address:


Message (optional):