Middle East Strategy at Harvard

From Alan Dowty

As predicted, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert could not survive the steady drumbeat of scandal that has marked his recent career. It was the Lebanese debacle of 2006 that put his prime ministership into a permanent tailspin, but he survived the final report of the Winograd Commission and might well have remained aloft until the next scheduled elections—in 2010—but for the sleaze factor that brought him down to earth.

The disclosure that a U.S. businessman (Morris Talansky) was acting as Olmert’s personal ATM machine was, as noted here previously, the last straw. It set in motion the machinery for new primary elections in his Kadima Party, now set for September 17, which would certainly have ended in his political demise; had Olmert dared to contest the result, his support would have been microscopic. But then came yet another “last straw”: charges that Olmert had been arranging his own family travel at someone else’s expense (the “Rishon Tours” scandal). And, it should be recalled, this comes on top of three other, still-pending investigations: two involving personal favors granted by Olmert as minister of trade and industry, and one involving his purchase of a home at an artificial price.

So the prime minister finally decided to make a virtue out of necessity and call it a day. But he may yet drag out his tenure in office by several months. The newly-elected leader of Kadima will need to reconstitute the governing coalition, requiring the agreement of Labor, the Pensioners’ Party, and Shas (the Sephardi ultra-orthodox party). Labor and the Pensioners will likely agree—neither is looking forward to new elections, given current polls—but Shas is a question mark. At the very least Shas will drive a very hard bargain to prolong the life of the coalition.

Likud and its leader Benyamin Netanyahu are of course calling loudly for new elections now, given their lead in the polls. Conventional wisdom says that Kadima is a spent force and will be reduced to minor party status in the next election, going the way of previous centrist parties that burst onto the political scene and then faded from view. Conventional wisdom may be right. Whether elections are held in early 2009 (if the new Kadima leader fails to form a government), or as scheduled in mid-2010, barring major shifts Netanyahu is likely to emerge as Israel’s prime minister almost exactly a decade after his rather messy exit from that office.

Within Kadima, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni holds the advantage for now; her main challenger will be former Chief of Staff and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, with former Shin Bet director Avi Dichter and Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit in the mix. As usual, there is no shortage of candidates with strong security credentials.

Spokesmen on the right worry that Olmert, as a lame duck—and possibly a lame duck until early 2009—will use his time to conclude a final peace agreement with the Palestinians, in line with the goal of achieving such a settlement by year’s end. The concern is misplaced, as the chances of achieving agreement—despite recent happy talk—remain very slim, and even if achieved on paper an agreement probably could not be implemented by either side: not by Israel, and certainly not by a Palestinian Authority that cannot even guarantee compliance by the population it still ostensibly controls.

On the other hand, a breakthrough in negotiations with Syria is something that a lame-duck prime minister might pursue with some hope of restoring his reputation and some prospect of success.