JERUSALEM // Of the three politicians who announced the military
assault on Gaza to the world on Saturday, perhaps only the outgoing prime
minister Ehud Olmert has little to lose – or gain – from its outcome.
Flanking the Israeli prime minister were two of the main
contenders for his job: Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister and the new leader of
Mr Olmert’s centrist party, Kadima, and Ehud Barak, the defence minister and
leader of the left-wing Labor Party.
The attack on Gaza may make or break this pair’s political
fortunes as they jostle for position against Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing
party, Likud, before a general election little more than a month away.
Until now Ms Livni and Mr Barak have been facing the imminent
demise of their ruling coalition as Mr Netanyahu and the far Right have surged
in the polls and looked set to form the next government.
Both have strenuously denied that the election has any bearing on
the timing of the Gaza operation. But equally they hope a successful strike
against Hamas may yet save them from electoral humiliation.
In the run-up to the election, observed Michael Warschawski, a
founder of the Alternative Information Centre in Jerusalem, “all Israeli leaders
are competing over who is the toughest and who is ready to kill more”.
Mr Netanyahu, pushed out of the spotlight, has had to turn his
fire away from the two other parties and instead lambast easy political targets:
in recent speeches he has questioned the loyalty of Israel’s 1.2 million Arab
citizens and demanded the resignation of the only Arab government minister.
Mr Barak, an unpopular former prime minister but Israel’s most
decorated combat soldier, has the most political capital to gain from the
current military campaign. With his once-dominant Labor Party languishing in the
polls, he will take the credit or blame among voters for the outcome in Gaza.
Ms Livni is in a more precarious position. Her glory, if the
operation proves a triumph, will be of the reflected variety. But as Mr
Netanyahu’s fortunes have grown, her political fate has become increasingly
dependent on a continuing centre-left alliance with Mr Barak. The two, it seems,
stand or fall in these elections together.
Nonetheless, the stakes for both are high. Mr Olmert’s popularity
nosedived over his mishandling of a similar venture in summer 2006, when he
approved air strikes on Lebanon and a limited ground invasion that failed to
crush Hizbollah.
A subsequent damning state inquiry, the Winograd Committee,
ensured that the usual corruption scandals that haunt most senior Israeli
politicians eventually caught up with Mr Olmert and forced him to step down.
Mr Barak and Ms Livni presumably believe they have learnt the
lessons of Mr Olmert’s miscalculation in Lebanon. So far they appear to be
playing a cautious hand, wary of risking major Israeli casualties in a
large-scale ground war or of reoccupying the Strip.
They have also limited the operation’s goals to teaching Hamas a
lesson and creating “calm in the South” – code for quietening rocket fire from
Gaza. Mr Barak, in particular, has preferred bland slogans such as “now is the
time for fighting” rather than defining the rationale for the operation.
The timing of the Gaza attack offers Mr Barak and Ms Livni
several advantages.
First, a head of steam had built on both the Right and Left
inside Israel demanding that military action be taken against Hamas to stop the
rockets.
Days before the Gaza operation even Meretz, a far Left party,
issued a statement favouring a military strike against Hamas. Protests so far
have been confined inside Israel to tyre-burning at the entrances to Arab
communities and a demonstration among a few hundred peace activists in Tel Aviv.
Meanwhile, right-wing politicians who accused Mr Barak of treason
for allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza last Friday – a ruse on his part to
wrong-foot Hamas before the air strikes – look foolish.
According to reports in the Israeli media, Mr Barak had been
planning the attack on Gaza with his chiefs of staff for at least six months –
about the time the original ceasefire was being agreed with Hamas.
Given their delay in launching the operation, Ms Livni and Mr
Barak face little danger of being accused in hindsight of the recklessness or
lack of preparation that blighted Mr Olmert’s escapade in Lebanon.
Second, by launching the attack when many foreign reporters were
away from the region for the holidays, the government hoped to be able to
inflict the maximum damage on Gaza before the media could catch up.
It will take some days before western reporters effectively renew
the pressure against Israel over its months-old decision to bar them from
entering the Strip. The result will be fewer investigations of Israel’s choice
of targets in Gaza, or the nature of the casualties and a greater emphasis on
talking heads in studios in Jerusalem, at which Israeli spokesmen excel.
Third, Israel has exploited the power vacuum in Washington.
George W Bush, the outgoing US president, has rarely exerted significant
pressure on Israel and is even less likely to do so in the dying days of his
administration.
The incoming president, Barack Obama, meanwhile, will not want to
precede his presidency with a major confrontation with Israel’s powerful lobby.
Most western governments, Mr Barak and Ms Livni hope, will take their cue from
Washington’s silence.
And fourth – and most importantly – their political rival, Mr
Netanyahu, has been silenced. His main platform had been insisting on a tougher
approach in Gaza.
In the current “state of emergency”, the parties have agreed to
suspend the usual election campaigning, leaving Ms Livni and Mr Barak visibly in
charge of the country’s security.
But as one Israeli commentator, Yossi Verter, warned: Mr
Netanyahu should not be written off as the Israeli population moves once more on
to a war footing.
“History teaches us that military campaigns which occur during
[Israeli] election campaigns … benefit the right-wing more than any other camp.”
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