An exit without a strategy
Everyone was urging a quick end to Operation "Cast Lead". This operation was unprecedented in its scale, relative to Israel's past actions in the Gaza Strip. So was the damage it left behind, and that won't make things easier for us on the diplomatic front. A campaign like this needs to have a strategic outcome that justifies its scale. The needed outcome is for there to no longer be an Iranian terror base 3 kilometers from Sderot and 8 kilometers from Ashkelon. The government is not doing enough to achieve this goal. As things now stand, the focus of the diplomatic efforts is on the issue of engineering - sealing off the Gaza-Egypt border - and not on the formation of a different reality in Gaza. If there is no one in Gaza to accept the missiles and the money from Iran, the tactical/engineering issue becomes secondary. If we leave behind a Hamas regime in Gaza, it will soon find a way to bypass the obstacles and to rearm. No need for America's 'nuclear umbrella'
This week, although I was deeply engrossed in the successful primaries of the "Strong Israel" party (the first primaries in the world to be conducted entirely via the Internet, without a hitch, and with a 93% voter-turnout) my attention was drawn to the headline that the new American administration is going to offer Israel a "nuclear umbrella" in case of an attack by Iran. This is not necessarily good news. This offer, more than it speaks of a friendship toward Israel, expresses an American resignation to the nuclearization of Iran. The 'nuclear umbrella' is meant to bring about an Israeli resignation to this reality. What the proposal means is that America will threaten Iran with a 'second strike' in response to any attack on Israel's cities with nuclear weapons. Crime families are terror organizations
The assassination of Yaakov Alperon in the heart of Tel Aviv, via a bomb planted in his car, is last week's major event. The issue is not the identity of the murder victim but rather the lawlessness embodied in his murder. Israel has several crime families; they are, for all intents and purposes, terrorist organizations. The war between them takes the lives of innocents who have the misfortune of finding themselves in the battle zone. Only a few months ago a mother was murdered in front of her husband and two children on the beach in Bat-Yam, when was caught in the crossfires of a shooting aimed at some criminals in the area. Israeli Arabs need new leadership
The riot in Acre is the major event of this past week. Even if this turns out to be an isolated event, which does not spread or last long, as we hope, it exposes a difficult issue that no one is daring to deal with. Truth be told, all Israel's governments except for one have discriminated against Israel's Arabs. Only Rabin's government, at his personal directive, employed a wise policy approach towards them. The gap in services between the Arab sector and the Jewish sector is enormous. Arab youths who graduate from university are kept from being accepted into government and public companies without any security justification. Many Arab villages are not included in overall planning and building projects which has caused a residential crisis and led to an increase of illegal construction in these villages. Under these conditions, fury and bitterness are inevitable. A responsible government must intervene
While we were celebrating Rosh Hashana, the week's major event took place far from here, in Washington and on New York's stock exchange. The Administration's intervention to bail out the American economy by injecting hundreds of billions of dollars into the banking and financial industries and companies in distress is an event equal in historic significance to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989. Small wonder that the US Congress refused to support the plan the first time around. New Year resolutions
I would like to wish my readers a good year, a year of health and peace, for you and your loved ones. The fulfillment of some of our wishes for the coming year depends not on us but rather on others who are outside of Israel:
A stable government must be in place
Tzipi Livni's victory in the Kadima primaries will have a major impact in Israel over the coming months. The way the primaries were conducted in Kadima and all the events surrounding election day illustrated that the 'Kadima political culture' is identical to the original - the Likud's. On the political front however, thanks to Olmert especially, Kadima deviated from the Likud's path and let's hope that continues. A militia of thugs
Precisely because it was given almost no media coverage, the attack on an IDF base in Samaria by settlers on Wednesday, is for me the major event of the last week. It exposes the tip of the iceberg of a major issue. On Wednesday, after some construction materials were confiscated in an illegal outpost in the West Bank, dozens of settlers attacked an IDF base in the Ramallah area. A military vehicle was sabotaged, a tanker supplying water to the soldiers was blocked and detained, a dog urged on by a settler bit one of the soldiers, and a deputy battalion commander got his hand broken. The 'security or welfare' dilemma
The battle over the budget for 2009 is this week's major event. On Sunday, the cabinet will make its decision. The choice being offered by the Treasury is "security or welfare", which originates from the economic world-view of Binyamin Netanyahu. In his years as Prime Minister and Finance Minister, he managed to damage both security and welfare. There was one thing he did succeed in doing: benefit the wealthiest 10% of the population, by cutting its taxes. Israel lives in a neighborhood that is worsening by the day and faces constant serious threats from increasingly remote locations. The social safety net built in the first decades of the State's existence out of the values of the Labor movement, is gradually unraveling just when Israeli society is aging (as is happening in the rest of the Western world). Conversely, the Israeli economy is growing stronger, and Israel is in the 16th place in the world in per-capita income adjusted for purchasing power. Lessons from Georgia
Last week's major event took place one thousand and four hundred kilometers from here, in Georgia. Despite the distance, the war there has indirect implications for Israel and some important lessons for us. The supposed cause of the war was the desire of two ethnic regions on the Georgia-Russia border to break away from Georgia: South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The real cause of the war was Georgia's desire to join NATO and the European Union, and Russia's desire to block such a move and destabilize the regime of Georgia's pro-Western President Saakashvili. A rash action by Saakashvilli, a brutal response by Russia, and the grim results which we have all seen on TV. |
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