World
 
|
With approaching ceasefire, Israel's Olmert faces war of survival
By Ron Bousso
AFP
JERUSALEM
Petroleumworld.com 08 13 06
With the Israeli cabinet having approved a UN resolution on a ceasefire in Lebanon, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert faced a war of political survival at home Sunday amid mounting criticism over the way he has handled the offensive.
"Ehud Olmert knows that this is a juncture in time at which an entirely different war is going to begin," wrote Israel's second-largest daily, the Maariv. "The war over his political future and the future of his government."
At its meeting on Sunday, the cabinet approved a UN resolution calling for a ceasefire that UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said would take effect at 0500 GMT on Monday.
But with Israel failing to achieve two main objectives of its offensive -- the release of two soldiers seized in a cross-border raid on July 12 and the cessation of Hezbollah rocket fire at the Jewish state -- calls mounted for an inquiry into how Olmert and his government handled the offensive.
"On the 'morning after' there will be a state inquiry established to examine the war's management," Yossi Beilin, a lawmaker from the left-wing Meretz party, wrote in the Haaretz daily.
Critics argue that the Jewish state had little to show after four weeks of fighting, which left 151 Israelis dead, forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes across northern Israel and ground the economy there to a halt.
The two soldiers whose capture sparked the offensive remain in Hezbollah's hands, and on Sunday the Shiite militia fired 155 rockets across northern Israel by midday, part of the more than 3,700 fired since the beginning of the war.
"We did not win" cried the headline of leading columnist Nahum Barnea on the front page of the top-selling Yediot Aharonot daily on Sunday. "Israel comes to the cease-fire announcement bruised, conflicted and disturbed," he wrote.
Smelling political blood, right-wing opposition parties, who had offered the government their full backing during the fighting in Lebanon, have now turned up the heat on Olmert and his government.
The ceasefire agreement is "a dangerous and shameful decision that caves in to terror," Yuval Steinitz, a Likud lawmaker, told AFP.
"Israel's government should step down if it approves the proposal," Steinitz said. "This will be seen in the Middle East not only as a Hezbollah victory but will strengthen the Iranian and Syrian extremist camp."
Olmert has faced a remarkable turn of fortune in the three months since officially taking over from his mentor Ariel Sharon, the former premier who has been comatose since early January.
Olmert took office in early May vowing to permanently fix Israel's borders, following last year's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, by carrying out a similar but much larger withdrawal from the West Bank.
Today the plan looks dead in the water, with critics across the political spectrum saying that two massive offensives -- first in Gaza launched in late June and then in Lebanon begun two weeks later -- show that unilateral moves would not result in more security for the Jewish state.
And the 60-year-old faces his biggest battle for political survival, with one of the first tests coming on Monday when former premier and chief of the right-wing Likud opposition party Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a special parliament session on the war.
Amid the rising criticism, Olmert and his allies scrambled to put the best face on the UN ceasefire resolution.
"We turned the tables, and the UN resolution gives legitimacy to Israeli peace-seeking policy," Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres said.
"Hezbollah will not finish as a huge hero, but with its tail between its legs," Peres told army radio ahead of Sunday's government meeting.
"I think that we have finished more or less the victors both militarily and politically," Peres said. "We began slowly and now are at full strength, whereas Hezbollah started out very strong and right now, they are relatively exhausted."
"We are receiving an agreement which could certainly be good if we know how to implement it," Defence Minister Amir Peretz said in an interview on Saturday.
Olmert's and Peretz's often-quoted lack of military experience, especially when compared with his predecessors such as Ariel Sharon, Ehud Barak and Yitzhak Rabin, will now be used to ram the centre-left government, political commentator Raviv Druker said Sunday.
"The new and unexperienced prime minister is emerging from this battle bruised and weakened," Yossi Verter, the political analyst for the Haaretz daily, wrote.
AFP 13 1300 GMT 08 06
Copyright ©2006 AFP. All Rights Reserved.
Your
feedback is important to us!
We invite all our readers to share with us
their views and comments about this article.
Write to editor@petroleumworld.com
Any
question or suggestions, please write to:
editor@petroleumworld.com
Best
Viewed with IE
5.01+
Windows
NT 4.0, '95, '98 and ME +/ 800x600 pixels