As a matter of principle, it is not the business of American friends of Israel to tell Israelis who should, or should not, be their prime minister.
That is, unfortunately, a proposition that has been observed largely in the breach over the course of the last 30 years.
American Jews — and politicians, for that matter — have done their best (or worst) over the past three decades to try and tilt the outcome of Israeli politics and elections to suit their preferences.
A left-leaning diaspora Jewry often undermined right-wing Israeli premiers like Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir and Benjamin Netanyahu.
The right-wing minority tried, with less success, to give Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak, and then Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert the same treatment.
American presidents have also done their best to help elect Israeli leaders that they thought were more sympathetic to their vision of the alliance and the peace process, and to block those of whom they disapproved.
This pattern appeared to end in recent years with two unlikely partners: George W. Bush and Ariel Sharon. This pair forged the closest alliance yet between any Israeli and American governments.
‘Green light’ given
Bush gave Sharon the figurative “green light” to do whatever he thought needed to be done to squelch Palestinian terrorists. Sharon backed Bush’s endorsement of a theoretically democratic Palestinian state and unilaterally pulled out of the Gaza Strip.
While the Gaza withdrawal did not prompt Palestinians to give up their obsession with Israel’s destruction, it was wildly popular in Washington.
After Sharon fell victim to a stroke in January 2006, the Bush administration’s love transferred to his successor, Ehud Olmert.
As Olmert sought power in his own right under the banner of the new “centrist” Kadima Party that Sharon had created, he received the same sort of pre-election demonstrations of friendship (i.e., unofficial endorsement) that the U.S. administration had given to Sharon.
When Olmert hastily decided to go to war against Hezbollah in Lebanon after cross-border terror attacks, Bush gave him backing that previous Israeli governments could only have dreamed of.
Far from seeking to limit Israel’s victory, Bush gave Olmert the same green light he gave Sharon. U.S. diplomats stalled any talk of a cease-fire as the administration sat back and waited for the Israelis to roll up Hezbollah.
The only problem was that the Israelis didn’t win.
An inexperienced Olmert, his hopelessly overmatched Defense Minister Amir Peretz, and the airpower-besotted Israel Defense Force Chief of Staff Dan Halutz made indecisive and foolish decisions. The resulting bloody stalemate left Hezbollah in place to continue to threaten Israel.
This result was not only disheartening to Israelis. It appears to have shaken Bush’s confidence in Olmert’s competence as well.
Since then, U.S. foreign policy has drifted back to the old pattern of searching for ways to artificially revive a moribund peace process via even more Israeli concessions.
Now that the commission Olmert had hoped would allow his wartime failures to slide has reached a damning verdict, overseas onlookers have a stake in the question of whether he stays in power.
Given the math of the current Knesset — the majority belongs to parties that are part of Olmert’s coalition, and thus unlikely to be as successful if new elections were held — Olmert must have liked his chances of survival.
But with his deputy, Tzipi Livni, poised to make her move, and with the rest of this coalition of opportunists thinking they have to throw Olmert under the bus to survive, his end might be nigh.
All of which sets up a rerun of the old pattern of American butt-in-skis trying to influence the Israelis.
The Bush administration and diaspora left-wingers will probably root for Livni as the most accommodating of the possible successors. Labor (whose leadership may fall to Barak after Peretz loses the coming primary) certainly is no position to head this coalition or win a new election.
Right-wingers will be hoping that Netanyahu can somehow force early elections, given that he currently is the most popular politician in Israel (which shows how far the worm has turned since his disastrous premiership ended eight years ago).
But true friends of Israel will concentrate less on the fates of individual politicians and more on the nature of any government after Olmert’s.
No matter where you stand on the issues, the thing to fear is a weak Israeli government, no matter who might be leading it.
Lame ducks
It is obviously dangerous to allow a mortally wounded Olmert to linger in office for as long as another two years until the next elections.
Weakened by dissension within his own ranks — and Israelis’ manifest lack of confidence in his ability — Olmert would be particularly vulnerable to pressure and unlikely to take decisive action if it was needed.
The same fears might apply to a Livni-led government if it turned out to be an equally precarious coalition of lame ducks.
As his own administration winds down, we can expect Bush will be less likely to restrain the desires of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to flex the U.S. State Department’s own feeble diplomatic muscles.
Though Hamas leaders may be plotting a rerun of the Hezbollah war in Gaza, the idea of a renewed push to create dialogue with them might be irresistible — even if the authors of these initiatives were the same Saudi Arabian scam-artists who conned Rice into believing that a Mecca summit might strengthen Palestinian “moderates,” instead of co-opting them to serve the Hamas agenda.
Even worse, within the next two years, Israel may be forced to confront a nuclear Iran. While hope may still exist for some sort of solution to that threat via sanctions and diplomacy, an ineffectual Israeli leader will be in no position to deal with this life-and-death situation.
An American president will not trust in such a dangerous endeavor a government that has lost the respect and confidence of Washington, not to mention of its own people.
The question now is no longer whether the Israeli left or right — and their cheerleaders here — will prevail.
It’s whether a crippled leader in the form of Olmert or his successor will be allowed to hang on to the detriment of the alliance with the U.S.
As much as non-Israelis have no business choosing Israel’s leaders, the one message Israelis should be hearing from their friends abroad is this:
Pick whomever you want, but don’t leave a weak government in place indefinitely. The cost of political stasis could be enormous.
Jonathan S. Tobin is executive editor of the Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia.
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