After The War In Lebanon... The Battle For Israel

The struggle for a nation engulfed by the aftershocks of a bungled war

Taken from The Independent, UK, 03 May 2007
By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem

The struggle for control of an Israeli government gripped by aftershocks from the failures of last year's bloody Lebanon war began in earnest last night after Tzipi Livni, the Foreign Minister, called on the Prime Minister to resign.

Ms Livni became the first senior figure in the cabinet - and in Ehud Olmert's own party, Kadima - to announce that she had told the Prime Minister face to face that he should quit in response to the official report highlighting the failures of the war.

Ms Livni, who made no secret of her desire to replace Mr Olmert, declared after a tense hour-long meeting with the Prime Minister: "I told him that resignation would be the right thing for him to do. It's not a personal matter between me and the Prime Minister - this issue is more important than both of us."

Her announcement, which was delivered to reporters after the meeting in a notably low-key fashion and which stopped significantly short of a "you go or I will" ultimatum, was widely interpreted as an effort to accelerate the pace of an internal party revolt against Mr Olmert's 13-month premiership.

Mr Olmert was standing firm after the meeting last night and one of his senior aides suggested that he would have no alternative but to sack Ms Livni after her decision not to underpin her call to Mr Olmert by resigning herself.

A spokesman quoted him as telling an emergency meeting of Kadima Knesset members: "I intend to implement the recommendations of the [war] report down to the last detail. I am in a personally uncomfortable position, but I will not shirk my responsibility and will fix all the mistakes."

The stand-off marked a new climax in the struggle to contain the political fallout left by the failure - despite the inexorably mounting death toll - of the initially popular 34-day war in the summer to achieve either of its main objectives. They were the defeat of Hizbollah and the return of the two Israeli soldiers whose abduction by the guerrilla group on 12 July triggered the conflict.

The 48-year-old Foreign Minister is the most popular politician in her party and emerged unscathed from the Winograd inquiry into the war - unlike Mr Olmert and Amir Peretz, his Defence Minister, who was reportedly considering resigning from the government last night.

While Ms Livni's intervention after two days of ominous silence following the report's release marked an escalation of the turmoil in Israeli politics, it was not yet clear that she can be confident of commanding a broad-based coalition, which currently stretches from the Labour party, of which Mr Peretz is leader, to the hard-right Yisrael Beiteinu Party, and the ultra-orthodox Shas.

Some analysts were suggesting that the octogenarian former prime minister Shimon Peres could emerge as a transitional leader if Mr Olmert bows to pressure from the public to resign. A recent poll found that 65 per cent want him to quit in response to Winograd.

While the Winograd report vindicates Ms Livni's early call for a negotiated exit from a war which in the end cost more than 1,000 Lebanese and 150 Israeli lives, it also underlines the problems posed by a Prime Minister and Defence Minister with no top-level military experience - a supposed defect which several politicians and analysts believe could also count against Ms Livni.

While Tal Zilberstein, a strategic adviser to Mr Olmert, said the Prime Minister had "no choice" but to fire Ms Livni, Mr Olmert may yet face a dilemma over whether to do so. By staying in the cabinet, Ms Livni, as the senior deputy, would automatically become acting Prime Minister pending a leadership contest - thus ensuring she fought an election as an incumbent. If she is outside the cabinet then Mr Peres would take over in the same way.

On the other hand to sack her, according to Professor Yoram Peri, a leading Tel Aviv University analyst, might mean "an open war between Mr Olmert and Ms Livni and her supporters", which he said could further damage Mr Olmert as well as their party's currently flagging poll ratings.

And if the sacking were to take place before the end of today it could even tempt Ms Livni to become the star attraction at the opposition anti-Olmert demonstration planned for this evening in Tel Aviv's Rabin Square - although Professor Peri predicted last night that she would not attend whether sacked or not.

The scale of the demonstration is considered one of several crucial factors in determining Mr Olmert's chances of survival.

Ms Livni said she did not want a general election - in which the current polls suggest the party would trail behind the hard-right opposition Likud Party, led by Benjamin Netanyahu - but instead saw a leadership primary contest within Kadima as the means of choosing Mr Olmert's successor.

She said: "Kadima needs to choose its leadership in a democratic manner, in a primary, and when the time comes I plan to submit my candidacy. Now is the time to restore the public's trust in the government."

Ms Livni defended her decision not to resign from the cabinet by indicating that she wanted to work to implement the Winograd recommendations - particularly its call for the Foreign Ministry to be brought more fully into strategic security decisions.

She said the Foreign Ministry - which was widely reported to have urged a much swifter diplomatic process to end the war than actually took place - was sidelined by the Prime Minister. "Co-operation between the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister is not a personal, but a critical matter. It is no secret that during the war there was no co-operation of the kind," she said. "The commission ruled that the responsibility for the lack of co-operation falls on the Prime Minister."

Professor Peri said that Ms Livni may have lost "some ground" by treading a difficult path between openly delivering an ultimatum and doing nothing to harm Mr Olmert. Citing what he said was traditionally "almost a taboo" against an overt strike to oust a party leader in Israeli politics, he said: "She is trying to force [Mr Olmert] to resign without being blamed for it. That is the essence of it."

Many commentators and politicians anyway doubt Mr Olmert's ability to survive beyond July and August, which is expected to see not only the anniversary of the war in Lebanon but also the publication of the final Winograd report.

Among other things, the final report will deal with the bitterly controversial decision to prolong and expand the invasion - with the loss of 34 Israeli soldiers alone during the weekend after the UN peace deal was agreed in New York.

Israel's year of war and scandal
January 2006: Ariel Sharon suffers a stroke and remains in a coma.
12 July 2006: Israeli cabinet votes to wage war in Lebanon after Hizbollah fighters cross into Israel, killing eight soldiers and capturing two others.
13 July 2006: Israel launches air strikes on Beirut's international airport.
August 2006: The Justice Minister, Haim Ramon, resigns over charges of sexually harassing a female soldier.
14 August 2006: Truce between Israel and Hizbollah after 34 days of fighting and the deaths of about 1,000 Lebanese, mostly civilians, and 159 Israelis, mostly soldiers.
October 2006: Ehud Olmert under police investigation for alleged bribe taking in a major bank privatisation deal when he was the acting finance minister.
January 2007: Israel Defence Forces Chief-of-Staff, Dan Halutz, steps down after inquiry into Lebanon war.
January 2007: Shula Zaken, Mr Olmert's personal secretary, investigated by police over alleged bribe-taking. She has not been charged.
January 2007: President Moshe Katsav takes leave of absence after prosecutors say they intend to charge him with rape and other sexual offences.
25 April 2007: Mr Olmert accused of procuring investment opportunities for an associate while he was trade and industry minister, starting in 2003.
30 April 2007: Winograd commission releases scathing report on Israeli government's conduct in the war in Lebanon.