By David Bedein
March 15, 2006
To paraphrase Khalid Abu Toameh, the Jerusalem Post Arab Affairs reporter on March 15th, the continued presence of Israeli Minister of Tourism Rehavam Zeevi's killers in a Jericho prison represented a continuing threat to Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas and to the Hamas Movement.
These killers had been elected to the PA parliament, which would obligate the PA to free them and allow them to join their legislative body as an active opposition.
As members of the PFLP faction, these killers represented an official opposition to both Abbbas and Hamas. The PFLP rejected the Oslo accords that Abbas had signed and, as a Marxist entity, rejected the Islamic tendencies of the Hamas
Any protection that the PA would provide to the killers would hurt them internationally and also hurt them with any Israeli government, since no Israeli regime could justify negotiations with a PA that openly provided asylum to the killers of an Israeli government minister.
On March 11th, Shimon Peres, number two candidate on the Ksdima ticket, met with Abbas, three days after the US and Britain announced that they would pull their guards out of Jericho, since the PA had announced that it would free Zeevi's killers.
On March 12th, Abbas travelled to the EU in Brussels to secure aid.
While Abbas was in Brussels, the America and British officials who had guarded Z'evi's killers in Jericho indeed left the area.
Their departure allowed Israel to capture the killers, after laying siege to their jail cell.
Ehud Olmert and the Kadima gained a needed boost in the election campaign.
Meanwhile, during the siege of Jericho, Abbas recieved the funds he needed from the EU.
So there you have the flow chart of winners: Abbas, Hamas, Olmert, and Peres:
circumstantial evidence of an action well timed and well planned. the day before the most crucial public opinion polls are conducted in Israel before the March 28th Israel election day.
An aside: On June 9th 1981, I sat in the lobby of the Dan Hotel in Tel Aviv, a week before getting married.
This was the morning after it was announced that the Israeli Air Force had bombed The Iraqi nuclear reactor.
An ashen-faced Shimon Peres walked into the hotel with an ashen faced Ezer Weitzman, only weeks before an Israeli election where Peres thought he would handily defeat Menachem Begin, with the help of Begin's former Defence Minister, Ezer Weitzman.
Weitzman greeted Peres in the hotel lobby and exclaimed, rather loudly, "well, he screwed us, didn't he?", to which Peres said, loud enough for everyone in the lobby to hear: "You better believe it".
Shimon Peres, the new heir apparent to Ehud Olmert, understands what timing means in a political campaign.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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