August 10, 2006

Olmert: "I Expect You To Keep Your Cool"

JPost:

In the five months since Amir Peretz dethroned Shaul Mofaz as the country's defense minister, the two kept their tensions out of the public eye.

That period ended Wednesday, when a harsh exchange between the two leaked out of the tense, six-hour security cabinet meeting.

According to these leaks, Peretz erupted after Mofaz, who today is the transportation minister, made a tactical suggestion regarding the plan that Peretz and Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz brought to the ministers for their approval.

Rather than moving the forces from the South to the North, Mofaz recommended starting at the Litani and moving downward.

"If you would have brought this plan to us on the first day of the war I would have supported it," Mofaz said.

"Only Saturday night [at a meeting of the Forum of Seven], I asked the defense minister if he wanted to expand the operation, and he and the IDF said 'no.'"

Peretz yelled, "What do you want? What did you do as defense minister? Where were you for those years when Hizbullah built this threatening array [of missiles]?"

Mofaz replied, "Why are you taking things in this direction? This is not the time."

At that point, Prime Minster Ehud Olmert intervened. He said that the whole world was watching now, and that the entire country was "judging how we are acting at this time. I expect you to keep your cool."

Here's part of the reason tensions are boiling over:

The large number and the location of the casualties that the Israel Defense Forces sustained Wednesday indicate that the army does not yet control the narrow strip along the border, although this stage of the ground operation was supposed to have been completed already.

Meantime, more on the Mofaz/Peretz contretemps here:

Olmert found two ways to solve this dilemma - he allowed Mofaz to present before the ministers his plan for a swift, limited operation, a plan that would enable Israel to announce victory quickly and with a minimal casualties. Mofaz met with Olmert on Tuesday and presented his plan. According to one version of the story, he also told the chief of staff about it before the meeting.

The ministers reacted enthusiastically to the plan, and Peretz realized he had been ambushed. It was an obvious trick: The minister who has the most military experience in the government, Lieutenant General (res.) Shaul Mofaz, proposes an elegant and mischievous scheme, to counter the weighty, clumsy and danger-riddled plan proposed by his heir. If there are any complications, the public will know there was a simpler, cheaper solution.

Then Peretz burst reminding that Mofaz had been the one who neglected to deal with Hezbollah's massive arming during his tenure in the past few years. When the meeting was over, the accusations continued - on the one hand, voiced claimed that even if you have a new operational plan, you shouldn't wave it at a cabinet meeting just to demonstrate your superiority. Others counterclaimed that Mofaz had been opposed to Israel's unilateral pullout from Lebanon in the spring of 2000, and had also warned Israel of the dangers of the rocket arsenal there.
Olmert made efforts to restore calm in the meeting and explained that since he must maintain authority and responsibility, he can only bring the defense establishment's proposal up to a vote.

In the end, his salvation came from Condoleezza Rice. The U.S. Secretary of State called to inform the cabinet of expected progress in talks over a UN resolution which have so far been unfruitful. Livni had earlier conditioned her support for the proposal on a "timeout" to pursue a diplomatic resolution first before going ahead with the operation. As a result of Rice's news, Olmert and Livni managed to convince Peretz that the operation should be postponed for at least 48 hours.

And so the cabinet meeting ended in a rather predictable compromise: Approval of an outline of the operation in principle, while postponing its implementation to allow for development in the UN talks. Troops, however, will take up positions in preparation for the operation. Israel is telling the UN "hold me back," in efforts to prevent itself from getting swept up in any one decision and hoping for the best. Olmert's moment of truth has been postponed, at least until Friday.

I think it's imperative that a cessation of hostilities occur before Friday, or else this "futile little war" risks becoming a futile mid-sized one, with the risk of the conflict spreading well beyond the Israeli-Lebanese border growing materially daily. I am frankly stunned that American diplomacy has not yet secured a cease-fire (tomorrow we'll be a month into this conflict), and cannot stress enough the urgent import of same. Such a cease-fire is manifestly in the interests of all key parties involved, very much including the Israelis and Americans, in my view.