This isn’t a matter of failing to defend Israel, but of failing to defend American citizens; or even to call those responsible for their murders to account. It’s one in a number of failures of the American government to demand even the most basic display of responsibility from the Palestinians.

This has been a failure of the Bush administration. (And it was a failure of the Clinton administration before it.)

Evelyn Gordon lays out an even more damning case against the outgoing administration.in Just another bit of fish wrapping:

Does anyone still remember George W. Bush’s April 2004 letter to Ariel Sharon? At the time, it was touted as Israel’s main quid pro quo for uprooting 25 settlements, expelling some 10,000 Israelis from their homes and withdrawing the army from Gaza. Yet today, it is never mentioned – and for good reason: In the ensuing four years, the Bush and Olmert administrations between them have systematically eviscerated every “achievement” it allegedly granted Israel.

(It would appear that the Washington Post need not have worried so much. William Safire had a much different take at the time.)

But there’s a name that’s very important in Gordon’s opening paragraph: “Olmert.” What would have happened if Ariel Sharon’s successor had insisted that the United States make good on its pledges? Well here’s how Gordon describes one:

THE LETTER also pledged that “Israel will retain its right to defend itself against terrorism, including to take actions against terrorist organizations,” if Gaza did prove “a threat that would have to be addressed by any other means” than diplomatic pressure. In reality, Washington pressed Olmert to avoid anything beyond ineffective, small-scale military operations. But there, it was pushing against an open door: Olmert wanted a major operation as little as Bush did.

(Though, it seemed that the United States would have allowed a more decisive Israeli campaign against Hezbollah in 2006 than PM Olmert was willing to risk.)

And in the matter of the American pledge that all Palestinians would be settled in Palestinian territory, Gordon writes that the United States never much mentioned it again, but didn’t back down from its words. However …

Olmert, however, single-handedly gutted this achievement by offering to absorb some 20,000 Palestinian refugees under any deal. And as everyone knows, the minute you concede the principle, the price is negotiable.

Predictably, therefore, the world is already pressuring Israel to raise the figure. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, for instance, declared earlier this month that not only must Tzipi Livni honor Olmert’s offer, she might even have to increase it: “I don’t know how many [refugees Israel must accept] – 10,000 or 100,000, I don’t know,” he said.

While there’s no excusing the Bush administrations reversals; I wonder if things would have been different if Ariel Sharon hadn’t been incapacitated. More generally, is Israel’s well being more dependent on who is elected American President or on who is elected (or succeeds as) Prime Minister of Israel?

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

a. The Prime Minister bears supreme and comprehensive responsibility for the decisions of ‘his’ government and the operations of the army. His responsibility for the failures in the initial decisions concerning the war stem from both his position and from his behavior, as he initiated and led the decisions which were taken.

b. The Prime Minister made up his mind hastily, despite the fact that no detailed military plan was submitted to him and without asking for one. Also, his decision was made without close study of the complex features of the Lebanon front or of the military, political and diplomatic options available to Israel. He made his decision without systematic consultation with others, especially outside the IDF, despite not having experience in external-political and military affairs. In addition, he did not adequately consider political and professional reservations presented to him before the fateful decisions of July 12th.

c. The Prime Minister is responsible for the fact that the goals of the campaign were not set out clearly and carefully, and that there was no serious discussion of the relationship between these goals and the authorized modes of military action. He made a personal contribution to the fact that the declared goals were over-ambitious and not feasible.

From the summary of “Releasing Terrorists: New victims pay the price”

* The Israeli Cabinet approved on August 17 the release of almost 200 Palestinian security prisoners as a “goodwill gesture” to Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas. The list includes several prisoners “with blood on their hands,” who, by definition, were involved in the murder of Israelis.

* According to an informal estimate by Israeli security bodies, about 50 percent of the terrorists freed for any reason whatsoever returned to the path of terror, either as perpetrator, planner, or accomplice. In the terror acts committed by these freed terrorists, hundreds of Israelis were murdered, and thousands were wounded.

* Israel freed 400 Palestinian prisoners and five other prisoners in return for Elhanan Tannenbaum, who was held captive by Hizbullah, and for the bodies of three soldiers kidnapped on Mount Dov. According to Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman Tzahi Hanegbi, from the date of the deal on January 29, 2004, until April 17, 2007, those freed in the deal had murdered 35 Israelis.

Keep those two bits of information in mind when parsing Ethan Bronner’s Olmert Says Israel Should Pull Out of West Bank:

In an unusually frank and soul-searching interview granted after he resigned to fight corruption charges — he remains interim prime minister until a new government is sworn in — Mr. Olmert discarded longstanding Israeli defense doctrine and called for radical new thinking, in words that are sure to stir controversy as his expected successor, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, tries to build a coalition.

Let’s just say, as demonstrated above, this wouldn’t be the first time that Ehud Olmert has “discarded longstanding Israeli defense doctrine” and the earlier times cannot exactly be called resounding successes.

In the past Israel has, of course, believed in deterrence and no releasing prisoners with blood on their hands. These are doctrines that Olmert (and other Prime Ministers) has (have) discarded and they haven’t made Israel any more secure or brought it closer to peace. I suppose you can package it as “radical new thinking” but that’s not the same thing as it being a good idea.

Dion Nissenbaum thinks that Olmert’s right but that it’s too late and that he should have made this speech last year.

Yes, a year after degrading Israel’s deterrence and with the results of the withdrawal from Gaza flying into Sderot on a regular basis, the Israeli public would have been quite receptive to the idea of more withdrawals.

Tim McGirk is similarly cynical.

But for all those who think that Olmert’s thinking is in any way new, how does it differ from the past 15 years since the Oslo accords were signed? Since then even Binyamin Netanyahu ceded land to the Palestinians. As I’ve written before, what’s now the mainstream Right for Israel, is roughly where Israel’s Left was twenty years ago. Netanyahu, if he’s elected, isn’t going to recapture Gaza – he might bring the fight to Hamas – but no Israelis will be staying there. And Netanyahu isn’t likely to reverse any facts on the ground in Judea and Samaria either. He may not be willing to cede as much land to the Palestinians, but that’s a far cry from saying that he’d be making the “occupation” irreversible.

And it takes a real naif – or knave – like McGirk or Nissenbaum to heap sarcastic praise on Olmert for saying the right thing too late, when in fact it is the Palestinians who haven’t changed over the past fifteen (or twenty) years. As Jonathan Spyer recently wrote after outlining the phony Palestinian efforts to codify their “commitment” to a two-state solution:

The advocates of the one-state solution then maintain that since Israel has chosen to sabotage the possibility of partition, there is no longer any possibility for the realization of this, and since Israeli settlement activity has de facto created a single entity west of the Jordan River, the appropriate–or perhaps sole possible–response of the Palestinian national movement is to accept this fait accompli and to begin a campaign for integration of the entire population of this area into a single state framework. This case has been made in myriad publications in a variety of languages over the previous half decade.[25] It is hard to find mention of the fact that this position was in fact the PLO’s official stance until 1988. Rather, the impression given is that after a long period of commitment to partition, the Palestinians and the international community must now abandon this position, because Israel’s actions have made it an impossibility.

More generally Barry Rubin writes that he premise of Olmert and his admirers have it all wrong:

The reality is that the Palestinians–albeit living off large-scale, though poorly spent, global subsidies–for whom time is an enemy. They face bad conditions; Fatah’s decline continues; the chance to have their own state slips away because their leadership pushes it away. Arab regimes face Islamist challenges that may be defeated but waste resources and stunt their progress. The chance for democracy, moderation, and stability has been lost for another generation.

Peace is preferable but much of what makes it so is that it must be a good peace, one that makes things better and is sustainable. Peace is possible only when the other side wants it. Today’s peace process mania is like a cartoon character whose legs windmill in a blur but which never advances.

But whether or not Olmert is correct, his statement causes mischief.

The Yedioth Ahronoth wrote that Olmert’s comments would complicate Livni’s job even before she takes over.

“He places on the doorstep of his successor a foreign policy doctrine, the likes of which has never been spoken by an incumbent prime minister,” commented his interviewers.

It should be no surprise that the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas intends to pocket this for future negotiations.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he hopes the statements made by Prime Minster Ehud Olmert regarding sovereignty over Jerusalem, the territories and the Golan Heights will serve as a “deposit” for the next government.

And when lame duck Ehud Barak negotiated with Yasser Arafat, “under the gun” of the “Aqsa intifada” in early 2001, the Palestinians accepted all of his concessions as a starting point for future negotiations. Another example of defense doctrine disregarded, at great cost to Israel.

Ehud Olmert can’t help learning the the wrong lessons.

See also Daled Amos, My Right Word, Israel Matzav and Meryl.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Whoops, that’s “seal” not “SEAL.”

Soccer? Not going so well.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

The selection of a new head of the party, Kadima, was prompted by police investigations of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on allegations that he took money illegally while he was mayor of Jerusalem and industry minister. Mr. Olmert has promised to step down, but is expected to stay on as a caretaker prime minister until a new coalition is formed.

Mr. Olmert is still keen to reach some kind of historic peace agreement with the Palestinians before he finally ends his term.

David Hazony expands on those last two sentences:

Two things make me wonder whether he is really leaving us after all. First, Olmert has continued making bold statements about the peace process, yesterday veering sharply to the Left, warning Israelis that a peace agreement with the Palestinians will require some kind of land exchange, in which Israel gets to keep large settlement blocs in exchange for territory on the pre-1967 side of the border, announcing that Israel would participate in some kind of international plan for the refugees, which really means agreeing to absorb some fairly small number in order to give the Palestinians the ability to say they had “returned” refugees to their 1948 homeland. He also apologized for the expulsion of Palestinians in 1948.

The second is that he yesterday told members of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, who wished to give him an honorable farewell, that no good-byes are needed, since “I’ll still be here.”

Hazony suggests that Olmert is planning to stay on as long as he can, if not as Prime Minister then perhaps as a “special envoy” like Tony Blair (only on the Israel stage, not with the same international flavor that Blair’s role has.)

Maybe that’s why Shmuel Rosner doesn’t see much excitement in Israel. Check out his multiple choice quiz.

One more note about the Times article:

Class and ethnicity have entered into the contest, with Jews of Middle Eastern origin, the Sephardim, seeming to favor Mr. Mofaz while those of European origin, the Ashkenazim, who tend to be better off and better educated, preferring Ms. Livni.

The condescension towards Sephardim is pretty blatant isn’t it? Could you imagine a newspaper report in this country:

Blacks support candidate A but whites who tend to be better off and better educated prefer candidate B.

Think about it.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

The reformist group – Notably, most responses on the Olmert affair came from this camp. Members of this group are astonished not because of what’s happening in Israel, but rather, because the same thing will never happen in their own countries. In this group we certainly see jealousy of Israel, of its dynamic nature, and of its vitality. This group realizes that while in Israel the public controls its rulers, in the Arab world the rulers control the public. One surfer wrote: “If police in the Arab world could do what the Israel police did, then all the Arab rulers and their associates would be brought to court over bribery, corruption, and similar charges.” He added: “Transparency is the secret of Israel’s power.”

These reformists are the ones, according to Bechor, who

…will aspire to move closer to us, first and foremost in order to change its own society. It views Israel as a positive model for imitation and future cooperation. Indeed, even when it comes to such grave affair, there are still some rays of lights for Israel.

We’ll see.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

“It’s over,” said David Makovsky, an analyst with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “Rice was counting on the fact that Olmert’s dwindling political fortunes would lead him to turn to a diplomatic victory as a springboard toward a political comeback. But if he’s leaving office, that doesn’t happen.”

A few officials at the State Department expressed the slim hope that Mr. Olmert, now freed of the political shackles that make concessions so difficult, could turn his lame-duck status into an asset and strike a peace bargain with Mr. Abbas.

There’s something very disturbing about the State Department’s sentiment, if it’s correct. In other words the State Department wanted a lame duck political leader to strike a deal that went against the perceived interests of his constituents.

Noah Pollak argues that the early end to the administration’s peace making is a good thing:

In a way, this is not too tragic an end to the Annapolis process. It goes out not with a bang, but a whimper, with various diplomatic structures left in place so that the next Israeli and American governments can resume this perfunctory exercise without all the foolish fanfare that has marked the commencement of past efforts. Maintaining the drip-drip-drip of the peace process seems to have become a diplomatic necessity for American administrations. This iteration of it seems likely to fade into the background without the violence and death of its predecessors.

The Economist’s former Israel correspondent, Gideon Lichfield, blogs:

It’s ironic and sad that the only way to make an Israeli prime minister (and, while we’re at it, a Palestinian president) take peace talks seriously is to make his or her political survival hang by a thread. Which is why I’m kinda glad I don’t have to write about this stuff any more. And yet I can’t help doing it anyway…

Let’s see. Oslo was signed after Rabin had been in power for a year. The Hebron Accords were signed six months after Netanyahu became PM. That’s hardly when the survival of either was hanging by a thread. Though every Prime Minister has gotten reckless at the end of his term of office trying to make some even bigger deal – even without public support – every Israeli Prime Minister since 1992 has been serious about peace talks throughout his term. Failing to reach terms with irridentists like Arafat or Abbas is not a sign of a lack of seriousness. It’s just not possible.

Lichfield can complain as much as he wants about Israel’s leadership, but if he were honest he’d see that where Netanyahu is now is where Peace Now was 20 years ago. Frankly, it doesn’t matter what Israel has conceded, it hasn’t led to reciprocal moderation among either the Palestinian leadership or people.

If after 15 years of peace making the “moderate” leader of the Palestinians can only make an official statement in honor of a murderer and not to Israel, he is not at all moderate and it’s little wonder that the Israeli people have no trust in him or his intentions.

So yes, Olmert’s resignation may adversely affect the trappings of a peace process, but peace remains as elusive as ever until there is a true change of Palestinian hearts.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Back in April 1988 he participated in Nightline’s famous “townhall meeting” between Palestinians and Israelis. The New York Times reviewed the meeting. It recounts perhaps the most dramatic point in the event:

What was inescapable, though, was that on some matters they seemed as united as the Palestinians. After Mr. Erakat’s impassioned speech, Mr. Zucker attacked him. He said, equally impassioned, that Syrians and Jordanians had killed more Palestinians than had Israelis.

The audience of Arabs and Jews in the theater – getting the audience together may have been the act of a sovereign power, too – responded with murmurs and applause. Some of the Jews, obviously, wanted to back up Mr. Zucker.

”I don’t need your applause,” he said curtly to the audience. He also said the Palestinians ”won’t recognize my right to live.” The Palestinians didn’t look at him, although all four Israelis stared intently at them.

In Erakat’s “impassioned” speech he explicitly compared Israel to Nazi Germany. That was too much even for Peace Now advocate Zucker, who said that he might be able to make peace with the others but not with Erakat.

(Previously I blogged about this townhall here. I was a bit premature.)

If there’s been a feeling that Olmert might hold on indefinitely in the face of this investigation, it’s been because we’ve been here before.

In 1996 after Binyamin Netanyahu was elected Prime Minister, he was stymied in his attempt to form a government as 3 men he had wanted in his cabinet were in legal jeopardy. The NYT reported:

Adding yet another complication to Prime Minister-elect Benjamin Netanyahu’s tangled efforts to form a coalition, the Attorney General has advised him that two candidates for senior Cabinet positions face legal problems.

The notices coincided with reports that Mr. Netanyahu wanted to replace Attorney General Michael Ben-Yair, who was appointed by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. But Mr. Netanyahu denied the reports, and it was unclear whether the legal actions or the leaks came first.

The affected candidates were Jerusalem’s Mayor, Ehud Olmert, one of the most popular members of Mr. Netanyahu’s party, the Likud, and Rafael Eitan, a right-wing former general who allied his small Tsomet Party with the Likud on the promise of a senior Cabinet post.

The other cabinet member whose appointment was stopped by Ben Yair was Yaacov Ne’eman who was eventually acquitted and was appointed Finance Minister later. The charges against Gen. Eitan, if I remember correctly, didn’t even make it to court. And Ehud Olmert was acquitted.

Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert has charged that former attorney-general Michael Ben-Yair indicted him “because he [Ben-Yair] is a wicked person.”

“I am convinced that Ben-Yair had premeditated ulterior motives, because that is the kind of person he is. Everyone who knows Ben-Yair knows that he acted out of evil intent, to settle personal accounts and pave his own way to political options,” Olmert was quoted telling the Bar Association’s journal, Halishka.

Olmert was acquitted on September 28 by Tel Aviv District Court on charges of campaign finance fraud in connection with the 1988 Knesset election and the 1989 local council elections, when he was the …

I think that Ben-Yair’s efforts were politically, not legally motivated, but given the similarity in his outrage now, to his outrage then, I wonder if maybe Olmert was lucky the first time. Maybe he figured that if he was innocent the first time, he’s innocent now.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Palestinian officials reacted cautiously, with Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki saying that Olmert’s decision would not change much, the Associated Press reported. “It’s true that Olmert was enthusiastic about the peace process and he spoke about this process with great attention, but it has not achieved any progress or breakthrough,” Maliki said.

Israel and the Palestinian Authority, whose influence is limited to the West Bank, renewed peace talks at a U.S.-sponsored conference in Annapolis, Md., in November, after a seven-year hiatus. More recently, Israel has renewed indirect peace talks with Syria, with the latest round, mediated by Turkey, concluding Thursday.

Olmert said he would continue to push for peace as long as he is in office, but it appears unlikely that Israel will make any major decisions on concessions to either Syria or the Palestinians until a new government is formed.

Surprisingly though, the reporter failed to mention that Shaul Mofaz is also contending to succeed Olmert as head of Kadima, and mentions only Tzipi Livni as the frontrunner.

At the end of the article Kadima’s viability was questioned:

Gerald Steinberg, a professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University, said the most likely scenario was that Israel would go to new elections. That would pit Livni against former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, leader of the opposition Likud Party. Polls show Netanyahu with a 10-point lead over Livni if the elections were held today.

“She will have a hard time convincing voters that she has the necessary security experience,” Steinberg said. “We’re talking about issues like a possible war with Iran or Hamas in Gaza. These are difficult situations.”

Thursday’s announcement could also bode ill for Kadima. The party was founded by former prime minister Ariel Sharon in November 2005 to advocate for a Palestinian state in the West Bank. Olmert was thrust into the leadership of Kadima in January 2006 after Sharon suffered a massive stroke.

“Kadima is a very fragile structure that Sharon put together, and it could well shatter after the primary,” Steinberg said.

Daniel Pipes said the same thing, two years ago.

I was skeptical of Kadima from the very start, dismissing it just one week after it came into existence as an escapist venture that “will (1) fall about as abruptly as it has arisen and (2) leave behind a meager legacy.” If Sharon’s career is now over, so is Kadima’s. He created it, he ran it, he decided its policies, and none else can now control its fissiparous elements. Without Sharon, Kadima’s constituent elements will drift back to their old homes in Labour, Likud, and elsewhere. With a thud, Israeli politics return to normal.

Well that didn’t happen as Olmert proved to be able to keep Kadima afloat. However, I suspect that that’s because he’s an excellent political operator. Losing a half to two thirds of the party’s Knesset representation will likely turn it into a circular firing squad.

While focusing largely on the peace process, the NY Times’s report is a lot more comprehensive than the Washington Post (and doesn’t ignore Mofaz. It also brought this quote:

Mr. Olmert’s drive for diplomatic achievements “might frighten some,” said Abraham Diskin, a political scientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. There are Israelis who do not believe in agreements, and others who support the peace effort but do not feel comfortable having their leader negotiate desperately with an eye on the clock. “I belong to that second category,” Mr. Diskin said.

While the NY Times mentions that the PA claims that the announcement is an internal Israeli matter, the doctor of Holocaust denial has thrown an tantrum and declared that he will go home if no one pays attention to him. No one noticed.

Still neither the Times nor the Post seem much concerned with the threats Israel faces from Iran and its proxies, just the peace process, which I suppose is reflective of the American view.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

Yossi Klein Halevi writes (h/t Shalem Center):

Olmert is the embodiment of what has been, for Israel, the year of scandal: a president accused of rape, a finance minister accused of massive embezzlement, a deputy prime minister found guilty of forcing his tongue into the mouth of a young woman soldier. Olmert, two years after assuming office and promising to make Israel a more “fun” place to live, leaves us a nation in shame. He went to war in Lebanon to restore our military deterrence and destroy Hezbollah’s military capacity. Instead, he shattered Israeli self-confidence in our ability to defend ourselves, and empowered Hezbollah as the strongest force in Lebanese politics, with an arsenal three times larger than it possessed before Olmert’s war.

Olmert is the first Israeli leader–perhaps the first democratic leader anywhere –to threaten his own country with destruction if it rejected his policies. Israel, he warned, is “finished” if it didn’t withdraw from the West Bank. Yet in failing to defeat Hamas, he has insured the impossibility of a two-state solution for the foreseeable future, leaving us without a political or military option.

Perhaps Olmert’s greatest offense was in debasing our public discourse with terms like “Talansky’s envelopes” and “Olmert Tours,” diverting our attention from the imminent nuclearization of Iran and the growing power of Hezbollah and Hamas. Instead of focusing on Israel’s survival, we have been preoccupied with the melodrama of Olmert’s survival.

Clearly from his address to the nation Olmert didn’t get how out of touch he was.

In the area of security, we strengthened the IDF – we bolstered its strength and allocated enormous resources it had not received in the past. The North is quiet and does not face an immediate threat. Israel’s deterrent capability has been incomparably bolstered.

Jewish Current Issues though cites an expert who presents a much different view of things:

Also, the Iranians have very cleverly created two proxy armies on Israel’s border, one in the north called Hezbollah, and one in the south called Hamas. It is now estimated that Hezbollah has about 42,000 short-range missiles in rockets. Remember a couple of years ago when Israel went to war briefly with Hezbollah. Maybe the estimate then was about 15,000. They have re-armed, they are armed to the teeth, and Israel knows that if it strikes at Iran’s nuclear facilities, that Hezbollah is going to be able to launch an extraordinarily violent retaliatory strike that will probably depopulate the north of Israel. So regardless of who does it under these scenarios, whether it’s the United States or Israel, Israel is going to be the one that’s going to pay the short term price.

But what does Olmert’s announcement mean? Nothing. At least nothing yet. Ynet describes what will eventually take place. Once the Kadima primary takes place and a new leader is chosen for the party:

Olmert’s resignation will entail the resignation of the government in its entirety. The responsibility for the next move will be on President Shimon Peres. After holding consultations with representatives from the various political factions in the Knesset, Peres will be required to task one of the MKs with establishing a new government.

Most chances are that individual will be the chairman-elect of Kadima, if only because it remains parliament’s largest political party.

In any event, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who is also chairman of the Labor party and Olmert’s key coalition ally, cannot be called upon to form a government because he is not an elected member of the Knesset.

Israel Matzav points out that Olmert could hypothetically remain in power (of a caretaker government) until March.

Hashmonean (very fortunately) emerged from hibernation to show what things might be like until new elections are called:

Now, in the running for Kadima Foreign Minister Livni, and former Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz. Each will try to seize the leadership of the Kadima party and then the unenviable task of trying to construct a coalition for governing. The likelihood of Livni accomplishing this appears to me slim should she be elected leader of Kadima, as she will be forced to rely on the existing coalition partners and as exhibited today, that partnership is a farce in name only. Insane amounts of social legislation, benefits packages & assorted goodies & gimmes totalling billions were put to votes today in the Knesset despite official coalition positions not in support, what resulted was wide passing of these proposals (some in only initial first reads) and the dissolution of the coalition members from official position, in effect the largest non-confidence vote imaginable.

Israelly Cool! notes one more insult.

Meryl comments:

Ever the gentleman, he’s leaving office the same way he stayed: Without taking personal responsibility for any of his actions.

(While the Jerusalem Post praised the announcement and speech, A dignified end, I saw it more the way Meryl did.)

And we’ll give the last word to someone who hasn’t posted in a while, Mere Rhetoric:

You know what’s really awesome? An Israeli political crisis just as the window on stopping Iranian nuclearization is closing.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

PM Olmert was counted on to boost Siniora in Lebanon, who is planning to welcome back Samir Kuntar tomorrow,

But Olmert’s own weakness may be working against a “peace prospect.”

Syrian analysts told Haaretz that Assad senses that he is currently in an advantageous position and has no intention of relinquishing his preconditions regarding the framework of the talks.

“The indirect negotiations will continue so long as there is no American partner. Assad will also not make, at this stage, any gesture of good will to the Israeli prime minister, not even a handshake, because there is no reason to grant such a gesture to a weak prime minister,” a Syrian official said.

So Olmert’s called on to strengthen other leaders. Other leaders refuse to strengthen him, so how do we interpret Olmert – The closer to indictment the closer to peace?

It appears that this march to “peace” is simply a matter of Olmert surrendering more and more until he gets to “yes.”

And what would be a good caption here?
“Wouldn’t it be funny if I gave him a shove? Just a little one?”

Crossposted at Soccer Dad.