Ehud Olmert on Steroids

Saul Singer writes that Israelis want a leader who most resembles Ariel Sharon, and that Ehud Olmert (as Sharon’s deputy and successor) is best positioned to assume that role — with one major caveat:

Sharon’s power stemmed from the public’s trust that he was a security hawk who would keep them safe while at the same time making dramatic and creative moves to improve Israel’s strategic position, even if those moves involved painful concessions.

Even though Olmert comes from a right-wing background, the public does not sense that he feels their security needs in his bones.  On the contrary:  He is perceived as being on Sharon‘s left flank.  Previously he had burned his bridges in the Likud when, as mayor of Jerusalem, he gave Ehud Barak his stamp of approval.

Accordingly, Olmert’s first challenge is not to show that he represents Sharon‘s new disengagement paradigm, but that he does not represent disengagement on steroids.

If you want to see disengagement on steroids, read Olmert’s speech on disengagement, given two months before the Gaza withdrawal began:

It will bring more security, greater safety, much more prosperity, and a lot of joy . . . .  [E]verything will be changed . . .

[T]his is an inevitable stage in the process of changing the realities that have characterized the life of the Middle East for so many years on the way to create a new environment of relations . . .

. . . the beginning of a new pattern of relations between us and the Palestinian Authority . . . a new foundation for economic growth, for cooperation . . . so that the Middle East will indeed become . . . a paradise for all the world. . . .

[A] new morning of great hope will emerge . . . a great time for all of us in the Middle East . . . .

Shimon Peres would have blushed. And this isn’t even the most egregious part of the speech.  For that, you need to check out Anne Lieberman’s review.

Five months after the Gaza withdrawal and Olmert’s great expectations, there is no longer any “occupation” of Gaza.  The area has been cleansed of all 8,000 obstacles to peace, leaving the remaining inhabitants free to demonstrate their readiness to live “side by side, in peace and security” with Israel.   

And Gaza has been turned into — take your choice — “anarchy” “chaos” “mayhem.”  Armed militias roam the streets; public figures are assassinated; “clans” engage in gunfights; kidnappings are common; public buildings are stormed by armed demonstrators; weapons smuggling has quadrupled (including rocket-propelled grenades, “tons of explosives,” and anti-aircraft missiles); rockets strike in or near Israeli cities and close to strategic targets (despite the “security zone” created in the area where settlements once stood); terrorists stream across an essentially un-policed border with Egypt; an “election” is scheduled between a terrorist organization and a corrupt ruling party that promised three years ago to dismantle it and didn’t (and maintains its own “loosely-linked” one as well).

Given a state, they created a reverse Leviathan — back to a state of nature in five months. 

Did Sharon really intend to bring Olmert’s joy, new environment, new pattern, new foundation, new morning and great time to the West Bank?