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Dr. Aaron Lerner is co-founder of , Independent Media Review and Analysis, an Israel-based news organization which provides an extensive digest of media, polls and significant interviews and events relating to the Israeli-Arab conflict.
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By Dr. Aaron Lerner
January 21, 2006
Whether they planned it all along or simply stumbled into it, the Olmert team's decision to try and carry out a series of high profile assaults against settlers over the course of the period leading to election day is sheer genius.
Olmert's team didn't have to poll much to find that many of Kadima's potential supporters from the Left and Left-Center would like nothing more than to see settlers "put in their place" with the television screens filled with images of Jews being dragged from their homes in various outposts and elsewhere in the West Bank.
It's a win-win situation for Olmert: if a massive show of force causes the settlers to leave passively it's a victory -- and if security forces have to break bones, or worse -- to show who's boss, that's also a vote getter.
Olmert's team, with the cooperation of the media, can market these "victories" over the settlers as proof of his ability to handle Israel's security challenges despite his lack of prior experience.
To their credit, the advisors behind the Kadima Party have already anticipated the negative impact that pre-election terror attacks could have on Olmert's image. With the help of COS Halutz and others, the bloody second Intifada period has been set as the benchmark for terror, so even if literally hundreds are murdered in terror attacks before election day it can be claimed that terror is down.
But should the ability to uproot settlers from their homes be the defining qualification for candidates in the upcoming elections?
It might be if uprooting some settlers was the only thing holding up the implementation of a popular final status agreement that had already passed the confirmation process -- or if retreat was a foregone conclusion.
But no one seriously claims an agreement is even close to being reached -- and that's with or without Israel standing its ground on requiring the PA to actually disarm the terrorists before the talks start. That's disarm -- not simply put on the PA security forces' payroll.
As for retreat: it isn't a foregone conclusion -- it's the true issue of the elections.
Time and again polls demonstrate that the Israeli public opposes retreat. The public has no problem appreciating just how reckless further retreats in the West Bank would be. In point of fact, most of those who supported Ariel Sharon preferred him despite -- rather than because of -- his plans to carry out additional retreats after the elections.
That's why the Olmert team intends to upstage the retreat debate with media coverage of security operations against settlers. They know that if the elections turn into a debate over policy, support could plummet.
For the sake of Israel one can only hope that Netanyahu and the rest of the national camp are up to the formidable task of convincing the citizenry to vote for policy rather than personality.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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