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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
July 4, 2008
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We screwed up in the negotiations with Hezbollah and as a result now have a deal on the table to trade a live terrorist for dead Israelis. Since the Israelis are dead it would have been a nice opportunity to finally stand our ground. But it's too late. So let's approve the deal.
That's basically what Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told his Cabinet last Sunday in his rambling remarks.
Prepared remarks he and his team saw fit to make available to the public both in Hebrew and English on the Prime Minister's website.
But why stop there?
Why not come clean over the ceasefire with Hamas?
We screwed up in the negotiations of the ceasefire with Hamas and as a result found ourselves with a deal that set literally no restrictions on Hamas activities within the Gaza Strip to strengthen their military machine nor any obligation on their part to act against the ongoing smuggling of weapons, explosives and terrorists into Gaza.
The fiasco of the collapse of the Gaza-Egypt border fence created an opportunity to propose concrete solutions to address the challenge of this very porous border -- including the relatively low cost idea of transferring the residents near the border (with appropriate compensation) in order to facilitate the bulldozing of a sterile border zone that would make tunnel building both prohibitively expensive and generate a readily detectable footprint of activity. But we didn't.
Ultimately, our desire to avoid conflict with Egypt rather than the merits of the arrangements forced us to accept the deal.
It is true that the same desire to avoid conflict with Egypt that got us to accept this terrible deal also serves to prevent us from seriously campaigning for Egypt to stop the smuggling (with unrestricted sea based Egypt-Gaza smuggling supplementing the already massive tunnel based movement) but, them's the breaks. We screwed up.
We screwed up in our diplomatic and other activities relating to conditions in Lebanon after the Second Lebanon War. Part of the problem was that, for purposes of domestic politics, it was important for us to claim that the UN Security Council Resolution that ostensibly ended that war was an achievement rather than yet another failure. Complaining too vocally about the post-war Hezbollah build up would have played into the hands of the real enemy (read: Binyamin Netanyahu). We screwed up.
We screwed up in agreeing to talks with Syria under Turkish auspices. The last thing we need is to put ourselves into a situation that we unnecessarily embarrass or disappoint regional superpower Turkey - so now this extraneous consideration may very well dictate the Israeli concessions required to maintain a pace and progress in the negotiations that the Turks find satisfactory. We screwed up.
We screwed up in failing to come to the table with our own proposed schedule of tangible, observable and quantifiable Palestinian security performance goals. Instead we have a PA security force in the West Bank that might be making some progress in enforcing domestic order but is not seriously involved in fighting terror. In point of fact, its goal is to integrate rather than neutralize the gunmen. We screwed up.
And it goes on.
Down the line the Olmert team has screwed up.
And these screw ups can have a devastatingly dangerous cumulative effect.
When will this nightmare end?
Unfortunately, it appears that there are not enough MKs in the Knesset willing to risk their meal ticket.
This leaves indictment as the quick and easy was to stop this ongoing farce.
After the cross examination of Talansky in a few weeks, AG Mazuz could, if he wanted to, issue a one count indictment with an option to add more later.
But would Mazuz do it? Would he pull the plug on a prime minister negotiating concessions to the Arabs?
I fervently hope that the answer is yes.
But given AG Mazuz's track record, I wouldn't bet on it.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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