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By Reuven Koret May 2, 2007
The Winograd commission's withering criticism of the government of Ehud Olmert's bungling of last summer's war with Hezbollah has created an earthquake that seems likely to topple the Prime Minister and Defense Minister, sooner rather than later. The question preoccupying the pundits is whether he will be allowed a "respectable" exit or the shameful one he deserves.
Of course, he will then need to deal with various criminal investigations and the charges likely to arise from them. We can hope to find him, at the very least, like his buddy Chaim "A Kiss is just a Kiss" Ramon, entertaining children (though likely not young female recruits) at the Israel Prison Authority's petting zoo/work farm.
I don't believe in kicking a man when he's down, so we will let nature take its course with Olmert and watch the feeding frenzy with the same horrified fascination as when a small fish is dropped into an aquarium of piranhas. It's not going to be pretty.
However, it may be worth taking a moment to inquire about Kadima, the party that Olmert leads (for the moment). Set up by Ariel Sharon after his brutal expulsion of Jews from Gush Katif and northern Samaria made him persona non grata in the Likud, the party lost some support after Sharon's stroke left him incapacitated and Olmert in charge. Still, Kadima was the top vote-getter in the 2006 election, running on a platform of extending the "success" of Disengagement to the heartland of Judea and Samaria.
As the situation around Gaza has deteriorated, and Hamas and other Islamic Jihadists have strengthened their hold on the Palestinian Authority, the idea of pulling out of more territory and handing it over to terrorists has somehow lost its appeal among Israeli votes: a recent poll showed that 73% of Israeli Jews oppose additional land withdrawals. And the whole idea of a two-state solution has become increasingly unattractive when the leaders of the would-be Palestinian state make it clear that they will not recognize Israel's right to exist or abandon the violent struggle to destroy it, piece by peace.
The diplomatic performance of the Olmert government in diplomacy has been just as dismal as its wartime failures. Originally clinging to the Quartet-backed "Road Map" to a two-state solution, Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni have steadily backtracked under pressure from the US, EU, UN and Russia and apparently are resigned to accepting an eventual recognition of the Hamas-led government, indirectly funded (to the "good parts" and "good people" of the government) by Europeans, Americans, Russians, and Chinese. Is there any diplomatic initiative the Olmert government has championed? Is there any diplomatic success it has achieved? Is there anything but continual failure?
Of course, Kadima -- like the Pensioner's Party on which it depends for its existence -- has the right to exist. The question is whether it has any reason to be.
Certainly it had a reason when Sharon, by dint of his indomitable personal will, and the transient popularity of the Katif Expulsion, created a centrist movement and dragged in a riff-raff of unprincipled opportunists on his ample coat-tails. It attracted the perennial loser Shimon Peres, smarting from yet another defeat, this time at the hands of the illustrious war hero Amir Peretz, as well as a variety of back-benchers and wannabes from the watery-left and the watery-right.
But today the party is as purposeless as the shriveled husk of Ariel Sharon himself, artificially respirated, in a permanent vegetative state, with no hope of recovery, and no reason to be kept alive except to keep its cronies in their ministerial seats and Volvos, getting intravenous injections of public money and building up their salaries, pensions and insurance payments for a few more months, while giving a few of them a better chance to keep out of the clink longer.
Israelis are good at many things, but good governance does not appear to be one of them. With Kadima as ruling party, we have reached a bottom-feeding nadir. What we do well with vegetables are salads. Before the rot of the Olmert government is allowed to spread further, the over-ripe cucumbers and tomatoes of a party spoiled by too much irrigation at the public's expense, and allowed to grow monstrous, should be cut down to proportion, and to pieces.
It looks like the emasculation process is well underway, so we may as well sit back and let the piranhas have their fun. If there is natural justice in this world, then Mofaz and a few others will grovel their way back into the Likud, Shimon Peres will return triumphantly to Labor and have one more glorious opportunity to lose an election, and Tsipi Livni, the nicest girl in kindergarten, will realize that she is out of her league and content herself with riding Kadima -- forward, forward -- into ignominious oblivion.
It can be asked of Kadima what was apocryphally requested of Golda Meir's government, following the post-war commission that led to its demise: will the last one out please turn off the lights?
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