Israel Matzav

If you thought Olmert was bad.... look at Feigele

You all know that I think Ehud K. Olmert should resign as Prime Minister of Israel. But I think it's important to point out that along with Olmert's resignation, it is at least as important that we go to new elections. If we don't go to new elections, it is quite clear that Olmert's successor will come from the Kadima Achora party and that successor will almost certainly be foreign minister Tzipi Feigele Livni. Feigele may be more dangerous than Olmert himself.

Haaretz is reporting Sunday morning that Olmert is all that is standing between Israel and a planned cooked up by Secretary of State Condaleeza Rice and supported by Feigele to grant the 'Palestinians' a 'political horizon.' Under the Rice-Livni plan, Israel will enter into a 'shelf agreement' with 'moderate' 'Palestinian' President Mahmoud Abbas Abu Mazen that will not be implemented immediately because Abu Mazen is 'too weak' to implement it. Given that the 'Palestinians' have already rejected an agreement that gave them the 'eastern half' of Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount, Gaza, and 95% of the 'West Bank,' you can imagine what kind of agreement Abu Mazen would get this time.

In Rice's view, merely reaching such an agreement in principle would provide the Palestinians with a "political horizon" and hope, thereby encouraging them to fight terror and to establish governing institutions in preparation for an independent state.

Even Olmert is smart enough to realize that this is a trap. But Feigele doesn't get it....

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni shares Rice's approach, but Olmert is strongly opposed to the idea. He believes that any settlement reached should be implemented, and fears a situation in which Israel approves the agreement, but Abbas fails to sell it to the Palestinian public. In that event, Israel might be pressured to make further concessions to make Abbas' task easier.

Olmert has a much narrower vision of a 'political horizon':

Olmert agreed several months ago to launch talks with Abbas over "a political horizon," on condition that these deal not with the three core issues - Jerusalem, permanent borders and the refugees - but only with the nature of the future Palestinian state, its systems of government and law and security arrangements for the territories. Political sources in Jerusalem say that as Abbas becomes stronger and more able to sell the agreement to his people, Israel will agree to expand the discussion agenda to include the core issues.

Haaretz reports that the dispute between Olmert and Rice was quite out in the open:

The disagreement between Rice and Olmert was evident at the White House lunch meeting given by President George W. Bush for Olmert and senior U.S. and Israeli aides. As published previously in Haaretz, Rice talked about the importance of giving the Palestinians hope, "so that a Palestinian boy doesn't want to commit suicide when he grows up." Olmert countered that Israel has paid a price for its mistakes in negotiating with the Palestinians, and spoke about the horrific suicide bombings he saw in Jerusalem after the failed summit at Camp David and the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000.

Now just imagine if Feigele were Prime Minister....

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:33 AM