Waiting for Livni?

You know Ehud Olmert's political days are numbered when the only people appearing on radio and television to say a good word about him are the lawyers in his employ.

The political wisdom in Israel is that the premier cannot possibly carry on in the wake of the coverage of the Morris Talansky deposition in Jerusalem District Court on Tuesday. Polls show that 70% of Israelis do not believe Olmert's protestations that not one penny he took from Talansky went into his own pocket.

But even those who believe him or don't know what to believe must surely be scratching their heads wondering what sort of man would ask a political acquaintance to rescue him from the indignity of flying business class when seats were to be had in first class, from the ignominy of a luxury hotel room when a suite was to be had. They will wonder about his apparent sence of entitlement. They will reflect about how different his lifestyle is from theirs.

And even they will loose patience with him.

Yet, having survived the Winnograd Commission report which exposed his government's mis-handling of the Second Lebanon War, and having held on as one perturbing legal investigation after another raised questions about personal and professional probity – let's do not discount the possibility that our tenacious prime minister will try to hang on a while longer.

He says he will only resign if indicted. In the interim, he will want to hold on until July when his lawyers will have the opportunity to cross-examine the magnanimous Mr. Talansky.

His attorneys will remind us that Ehud Olmert has not even been indicted, much less been tried and convicted.
All this is true, but none of it really matters.

There is a strong sense – across the political spectrum -- that Israel needs another prime minister. Not in July. Not if this one is indicted. But as soon as is pratical.

That is why, for the good of the country Ehud Olmert must go.

On Wednesday, Defense Minister and Labor Party leader Ehud Barak finally climbed off the fence. At a brief afternoon news conference in the Knesset, Barak called on Olmert to leave. He cited a number of the difficult security challenges facing Israel: the Palestinian front; the issue of IDF captives in enemy hands; the burgeoning threat from Hizbullah-controlled Lebanon and the menace posed by Iran.

Even without his referencing the more “mundane” domestic agenda, Barak is right that Israel simply cannot afford a part-time prime minister who finds himself diverted by the extraneous issue of keeping himself out of prison.

BARAK CALLED on the governing Kadima Party to choose a replacement from within its ranks as soon as possible. This seems me like a reasonable interim approach.

After all, Israelis do not vote for a prime minister but for a party. In the Knesset elections held two years ago, Kadima's the top slots were held by Olmert, Shimon Peres, Tzipi Livni and Meir Sheetrit. With Peres now in the President's House, the likely candidate to replace Olmert is the foreign minister.

Polls show that almost a third of Israelis think she would be a suitable prime minister – which ties her with Likud Party leader Binyamin Netanyahu. Only 15% of citizens think Barak would make the most suitable leader. Shaul Mofez, Kadima's No. 8 comes in with 16% and Sheetrit currently polls hardly any support at all.

Now it is indeed up to Kadima to move promptly in selecting a new leader. My doubts about whether she has the fire in the belly necessary for the job notwithstanding, the party would be reflecting popular sentiment if it selects Tzipi Livni. Of all of the likely contenders for the leadership she has two qualities sorely needed: popularity and a clean police record.

Were lineage a determinative factor, it does not hurt that the her father, Eitan Livni, was a leader of the Jabotinsky movement. Yesterday, at memorial for Irgun commander David Raziel she referened the Olmert scandals by remarking that "The state has a vision and values which obligate its citizens and also its leaders."

At least on paper, Livni is the kind of pragmatic centrist many Israelis would like to see at the helm.

Israelis have become used to leaders who do a lot of swaggering, brim with self-confidence, allude to their military accomplishments and display no small amount of arrogance. Livni would make for a different kind of premier altogether.

She has a Hamlet-like indecisiveness that is troubling.

It is anyway premature to talk about what Livni should do or about how soon she should commit to holding new elections if she takes over. But one thing is clear, the sooner Ehud Olmert leaves the stage and someone of Livni's caliber takes charge the better.

Runaway rabbis

This month brought two more reasons - if any were needed - to bolster the case for disbanding Israel's established "church" and its ultra-Orthodox curia.

The first was the ruling by a panel of High Rabbinical Court judges upholding an earlier decision by the Ashdod rabbinical court that retroactively annulled a 15-year-old conversion to Judaism by Rabbi Haim Druckman, head of the Conversion Authority.

The ramifications of this hard-hearted decision are immense. Not only has the Jewish legal status of the woman involved (and her four children) been annulled, the genuineness of thousands of other conversions under Druckman's authority has been willfully cast into doubt. The ruling could also raise doubts about conversions conducted abroad by non-haredi Orthodox rabbis.

The reason for these rulings is straightforward: Orthodoxy of all stripes demands that Jews-by-choice accept the "yoke of the Torah" - meaning an Orthodox lifestyle. The woman in question purportedly failed that test and, for the haredi rabbinate there are no mitigating circumstances.

Reason number two was the suspiciously coincidental decision by the Prime Minister's Office to dismiss Druckman from his post because of his age - 75 - and administrative "shortcomings." It may be that the busy rabbi (who until 2003 was also an MK) is not God's gift to office management, but the timing of his dismissal - coming in the wake of a blistering personal and theological attack by the rabbinate's Rabbi Avraham Sherman - reinforces the perception that Ehud Olmert, like his predecessors, is politically incapable of reining in a runaway rabbinate.

DRUCKMAN is a leader of Orthodoxy's national religious camp. But unlike the non-Zionist, haredi-dominated rabbinate, his community feels obligated to bring as many Israelis as possible into the Jewish fold. Its conversion candidates tend to be people who have demonstrated a filial relationship to the Jewish people and do indeed commit themselves to a religious way of life.

The government established the Conversion Authority in 1995 as an Orthodox "work-around" in face of the rabbinate's deliberate sluggishness in processing conversion applications. But no temporary fix is feasible. The rabbinate cannot be circumvented because its ultra-Orthodox rabbis register most marriages, oversee most divorces and can block most conversions at will.

It is hard to think of any redeeming qualities of this anachronistic establishment that would make retaining it worthwhile. Neither Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar nor Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger provides much spiritual succor to the Israelis who pay their salaries. And because one of the paradoxes of Orthodox life is that one can never be "religious enough," these chiefs do not even have the allegiance of the rabbis who nominally report to them. The municipal clerics of Ashdod, Petah Tikva and Rehovot, for instance, do not recognize the legitimacy of non-haredi conversions approved by Amar and Metzger.

This is an institution that cannot be reformed. It must go.

THERE IS nothing intrinsically wrong with rabbis disagreeing among themselves. On the contrary, rabbinic Judaism evolved on the basis of argument and disputation, with the most convincing view usually emerging victorious.

Doctrinal evolution has always been an essential element of Jewish civilization. Today's rabbinate, however, brooks no dissent. With Orthodoxy generally growing ever more "ultra" - not just in Israel, but also in Britain, Europe and the US - the prospect of permanently entrusting key life-cycle events, let alone the very definition of Judaism, to these marginal, yet dominant holy men becomes ever more alarming.

To be fair, the desire of the ultra-Orthodox (along with their national religious competition) to define and direct the course of Judaism isn't exclusively fueled by money and patronage - although it's about that, too. The Orthodox stream, which comprises a minority of Jews worldwide and perhaps 19 percent of Israelis, is convinced that the future of "authentic Judaism" is in its hands. So even if the rabbinate were in the hands of Orthodox modernizers, the institution would still see itself as God's oracle imposing its definition of Divine will upon the rest of us.

Orthodox Judaism has many qualities to recommend it, but the 60-year-old experiment in which the state entrusted its functionaries with control over our personal and spiritual lives has failed.

Truce & consequences

In the topsy-turvy world of the Middle East, Israel's apparent failure to reach a six-month truce with Hamas via Egyptian intermediaries may prove a blessing, while the Qatar-brokered deal resolving an 18-month political stalemate in Lebanon may turn out to be a curse.

Early Thursday morning, hours after the Hamas delegation returned from Egypt saying that the latest round of talks had failed, Islamic Jihad received the green light to detonate a truck laden with four tons of explosives at the Erez Crossing. The attackers simultaneously unleashed a mortar barrage and automatic rifle fire to cover an incursion aimed at capturing or killing Israelis.

Fortunately, the attack failed, though the blast from the exploding truck shattered windows a mile away. For the Islamists, this constituted a "successful martyrdom operation," and the 23-year-old bomber is presumed to be in heaven with his 70 virgins. We suggest he has been received elsewhere.

Paradoxically, this latest attack underscores Hamas's desperation for a truce. Though a more rational approach would be to stop attacking Israel, Hamas knows that intransigence has its rewards and it is looking - not at all irrationally - to Europe for deliverance.

Israel has no claims on Gaza and would be delighted if the Palestinians turned their energies to transforming the Strip into a Singapore on the Mediterranean. After all we uprooted our settlements and pulled the IDF out in August 2005.

The Palestinians replied, in January 2006, by giving Hamas control of their parliament. Six months later, terrorists crossed into Israel, killed two IDF soldiers and took Cpl. Gilad Schalit prisoner.

RATIONAL Palestinian leaders would have asked themselves whether the misery they have brought upon their people by this aggression has been worthwhile.

Since capturing Schalit, Gaza has suffered well over 1,000 dead. (Many of these were gunmen; but, regrettably, not a small number were civilians caught in the crossfire.) Most Hamas "parliamentarians" in the West Bank are now imprisoned in Israel. Gaza's economy is in tatters. More than 80% of Palestinians rely on humanitarian assistance, three quarters depending on UN food aid. The number of households earning less than $1.20 per person, per day is now 70%. Taxi drivers are using cooking oil to fuel their engines, ruining their cars and polluting the air; the sewage system is near collapse. Power shortages occur daily.

And still the regime siphons off food and fuel for itself while attacking the crossing points where humanitarian aid is transferred from Israel into Gaza. On Thursday afternoon thousands of Palestinian rioters were dispatched to the Karni crossing to confront IDF forces.

The Islamists' response to Israeli and international sanctions has been to accelerate the violence and demand the release of huge numbers of hardened terrorists.

EU OFFICIALS have been saying that isolating Hamas isn't working. It's an analysis that's symptomatic of a disturbing European mindset: Set a goal, and if your opponent doesn't meet it, move the goal-posts. That's why we see France, which assumes the EU presidency in July, flirting with Hamas. It's like Groucho Marx, who steadfastly declared: "Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others."

It's a fact that anything the EU does to prolong Hamas rule, no matter how well-intentioned, will only intensify Palestinian suffering. Israel may well have to do some heavy lifting soon to bring Hamastan down.

And if the world wants to see what happens to a polity when Islamists reign supreme, let it cast an eye at poor Lebanon, where a truce has been "successfully" negotiated - along terms dictated by Hizbullah and its Iranian patrons.

What an extraordinary message of appeasement the Sunni-dominated Arab League has sent to the Shi'ites of Lebanon and their Persian backers. Control over the airport? A private communications network? A submissive cabinet? An independent army? A change in the election law to solidify future Islamist hegemony? Whatever Hizbullah wanted, it got.
Yet who can blame the League for lacking the resolve to stand up to Hizbullah when America and the EU have signed on to this ignominious arrangement?

Psychologists tell us the tendency to go to extraordinary lengths to avoid emotional suffering contributes to a person's neurosis. In international affairs, the tendency to avoid painful confrontation often leads to appeasement. In both instances, the underlying pathology comes back to haunt you.

Peace and Golan

It's official.

Shortly after noon yesterday, the Prime Minister's Office announced that "Syria and Israel have started indirect talks under the auspices of Turkey" in search of a "comprehensive peace" based upon "the Madrid Conference terms."

That reference point is significant because it was at Madrid, in 1991, that Israel accepted the principle of a withdrawal from the Golan Heights in exchange for peace.

Though reports that Turkey has been serving as an intermediary in secret talks between Syria and Israel have been circulating for months, Wednesday's official announcement stuns nevertheless. For it comes as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is fighting for political survival in the face of mounting investigations into alleged wrongdoing.

Yet the news that top Olmert aides Shalom Turjeman and Yoram Turbovitz were in Istanbul as Turkish officials shuttled between them and Syrian negotiators raises hope that Syria may join Egypt and Jordan in making peace.

It also evokes cynicism. A common reaction by politicians and citizens alike - across the political spectrum - has been the Hebrew saying which translates as: "The depth of the retreat parallels the extent of the investigation."

But let's for the moment put aside the question of the premier's possible ulterior motives. And let's, for argument's sake, forget that Olmert's popularity is at a nadir, that his governing coalition is crumbling, and that on Friday the police will again be visiting his home with more questions about money-stuffed envelopes from a man named Morris Talansky.

WHAT INTERESTS Israelis most is whether this momentum toward a deal is in the country's interest. We are troubled by reports of a Syrian announcement that Israel has already agreed to withdraw from the Heights even in the absence of direct negotiations between the sides.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, we may be witnessing an extraordinary Bush administration about-face. Until recently, Washington had been signaling Jerusalem not to engage with Damascus because of Syria's treacherous roles in Iraq and Lebanon and its bond with Iran.
Then all of a sudden, according to a report Saturday in the London-based Arabic Al-Hayat daily, the US supposedly asked Turkey to increase its efforts to advance negotiations between Israel and Syria.

YET ALL this is also besides the point. For what matters most now is what Syria is offering to make a withdrawal worth Israel's while. The extent of any withdrawal must parallel the depth of the peace offered. Who wants a cold peace with a Syria which has practically melded its foreign and military policies with Iran?

For Israelis to take its overtures seriously, Damascus would have to disconnect itself totally from the Iranian mullahs. Rather than helping arm Hizbullah, Syria would have to isolate it. And not only would Syria's policy of assassinating freedom-loving Lebanese leaders have to end, Damascus would need to recognize Lebanese sovereignty and open an embassy in Beirut. Israel cannot reasonably make peace with Syria while Lebanon smolders.

A deal with Syria could also potentially bolsterrelative moderates among the Palestinians; but not if Syria continues to host the Hamas leadership in Damascus. From state-sponsor of terror, it would have to transform itself into strategic opponent of terror.

Nor can Israel afford a deal perceived as being with Bashar Assad's Alawite clique alone. For the complete normalization of relations integral to any treaty, we need signs that Syria is developing its civil society and political institutions, and that the Sunni majority is being socialized toward tolerance and peace by the formidable state-controlled media.

A peace treaty with Syria is in Israel's strategic interest - but not at any price. Jerusalem is being called upon to make irrevocable concessions in return for the promise of Syrian goodwill. The finer points of an accord, notably about access to Israel's main natural water resource, the Kinneret, will be critical. The Golan, a vital geostrategic area which offers control of northern Israel, would have to be demilitarized and somehow trustworthy monitors put in place - but why not also envision a normalization that allows Jews to continue living there?

When Bashar took over from his father, Hafez, in 2000, the London-educated, British-accented physician was portrayed as the leader who would transform an autocracy into a forward-looking polity. But the apple didn't fall far from the tree. Assad the son has actually blocked access to the Web. There is only one government controlled Internet provider in Syria. Even Iran has more freedom of access.

Still, if Bashar now seeks that path, and truly seeks to lead his country, and by extension the Arab world, to full normalization with Israel, Israelis would urge him, as a vital step toward persuading us that we have entered an era of reconciliation, to come to the Knesset and tell us about it.