Former Shin Bet Chief MK Ami Ayalon (Labor) launched an unprecedented attack on Labor Party Chairman Amir Peretz Friday. Ayalon, located on the sixth spot of the party's Knesset list, announced in a closed meeting that he plans to establish a new political camp and harshly blasted Peretz over the way he handled the coalition negotiations opposite Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
| New Government |
|
| Kadima, Labor sign coalition agreement / Attila Somfalvi |
|
After three weeks of tiring negotiations with expected outcome, Labor Kadima sign coalition agreement; Labor will be given Defense, Education, Infrastructure, Tourism and Agriculture Ministries and two of its MKs will be ministers-without-portfolios. senior Kadima sources say deal with Shas finalized as well |
| Full story |
|
|
|
Ynet provides exclusive quotes from the meeting, in which Ayalon slammed what he referred to as the unworthy coalition agreement his party leader signed.
Ayalon was prepared. The criticism against Peretz was not coincidental. It was given in tough, measured and planned tones.
"I'm not (Professor Uriel) Reichman," Ayalon told the meeting attendees, to make it clear that he does not plan to retire from politics, as the Kadima MK did.
"I did not come here with Amir. I arrived a year before him. I came to this party in a desire to see a renewal process. They asked me what renewal is. It's first of all new people, and no less important, a new agenda, and no less important, internal processes allowing the organization to operate, be updated, be renewed, both on the personal and on the ideological level."
Ayalon made it clear that he is challenging the way, not personally.
"I am challenging the party's way. From my point of view, Amir Peretz is the party's chairman, who was elected in an appropriate manner. This is not the time to fight him as a chairman," he said.
"I do think that we should make the Labor Party's way clear and limit his power. He can't do what he wants with this party. Since I cannot understand the internal logic of his decisions, I am not a "sheep" in favor, for the sake of illustration," Ayalon added.
"In order to fight the stances," he said, "we have to create a political camp. Therefore, I plan to create a political force that will fight for the Labor Party's way and identity, as a first stage. Will I eventually compete (against Peretz)? I don’t reject a thing. But by no means whatsoever do I want to start with this now."
Ayalon slammed the way Peretz handled the coalition negotiations.
"Alongside many accomplishments, I see many failures. This government is distancing itself from the public before it has even been established. My claim is that at a certain stage of the negotiations, it appears that both Ehud Olmert and Amir Peretz forgot that they have a state to run, and both preferred political considerations over national public considerations," he said.
"The election of the ministers was conducted according to a logic which I don’t understand, and what I do understand I don’t like. In conclusion, they definitely favored political considerations over national public considerations. I receive many angry phone calls telling me: We didn’t vote for Amir, we voted for the list," he added.
'Ministers without portfolio immoral'
Ayalon ridiculed the election of the ministerial candidates: "When I was a child, I really liked mathematics. I'll give you a series of number: 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 16. Give me another number. There is no internal logic in this list. It's an internal logic detached from the promises we gave the voters, detached from the feeling of renewal and reliability we created among those who gave us their votes. It's an internal logic that favors small, shady politics over a public message needed in order to start the next election campaign."
"We are leading to the death of the revolution we led before it has even been born," he charged.
"In order to get rid of Ami Ayalon one doesn’t need a lot of sophistication. I announced that we don’t need a minister without a portfolio. It's immoral for a party carrying the banner of public integrity to have a minister without a portfolio. He has no ministerial responsibility. He works one day a week. What does he do the rest of the week? He receives a Volvo and assistants," the MK said.
"It's immoral, and in order to make this clear, I, Ami Ayalon, will not be a minister without a portfolio. Getting rid of me is as easy as a pie. If they would tell me that, I would say I was moving to the Knesset," he added.
Ayalon went on to say that "the problem is much deeper. We came with a message of economics and society before anything else. The most important portfolio is the Defense portfolio. There is no connection between our messages on the campaign and the Defense portfolio, important as it may be. As a result of taking the Defense portfolio, we couldn't compete over very important economic and social portfolios."
"We sold ourselves cheaply for ministers without a portfolio. In spite of very important accomplishments of a feeling of renewal and vitality, we are beginning to lose our way. I feel like an internal compass, in a bid to take the messages of the real Labor, which put education, science and technology before everything," he said.
"The real Labor Party is a party of fishermen, not of fish merchants. Fish merchants distribute fish, and fishermen hand out fishing rods. Education and knowledge are not only social justice, not only a nourishing enterprise. It's the main tool given to the citizens, which they cannot survive without," he added.
'Livni fails to understand Middle Eastern reality'
Some of Ayalon's remarks were also devoted to the diplomatic-security issue. He criticized the fact that the future government believes in its ability to solve any issue without the involvement of a Palestinian side.
"(Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud) Abbas is calling on us in every language, from every state: I want a two-state solution, let's talk. We don’t understand the Palestinian side. We don’t understand that the power and authority are in Abbas' hands," Ayalon said.
"He is not like the president of the state of Israel. He is not like a prime minister even in Israel. He was elected personally. He is like the president of the United States. He has the authority to dissolve the parliament and he also has the authority to negotiate on behalf of the Palestinian people. Therefore, we are making a serious mistake by not creating an axis of pragmatism, an axis connecting all those who are moderate," he charged.
"We refuse to talk to people who want to talk to us. Abbas is the most relevant person in the world. The foreign minister fails to understand the Middle Eastern reality, because she is afraid that if we reach negotiations we will have to pay the real price of the agreement, which is not an easy price. It's a painful price," he added.
Ayalon went on to say that "Israel will not be the safe state of the Jewish people if there will be no Palestinian state. I have not come from Mount Sinai. It took me many years to understand this. It took my generation many years to awaken from the experience of a greater Israel… The question is not how we separate from the Palestinians, but rather how we separate from the Palestinians and allow the creation of two states, which may have a border conflict, and it is legitimate to have a border conflict."
"We don’t understand that we need a partner for a unilateral withdrawal. We don’t understand it, because we don’t understand what happened in Gaza. When we pulled out from Gaza we had a Palestinian partner. If there were terror attacks, we would either not have withdrawn from there or the pullout would have looked completely different. So different, that all our dreams would have become extinct. We had a partner, and not as a result of the IDF's intimidating deterrence, and not because of the Shin Bet's foiling. It's a result of Arafat's disappearance and Abbas' election," he said.
"Hamas came to power for several reasons: Because in their eyes there is no one to talk to and nothing to talk about on the Israeli side. They may be right. The second thing is because the Palestinian government was completely corrupt. Fatah was corrupted. They saw an Israeli partner who only understands the language of force. Throughout the years of negotiations we didn’t give them a state, and Arik (former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon) escaped from Gaza after using force," he added.
"We must understand that the more we torture Hamas, it will multiply and break out. Hamas is strengthening among the Palestinian public opinion. There are more people who would vote Hamas than on the day it was elected. Hamas is only afraid of one thing: A reality in which the Palestinians believe that there is a diplomatic process and that there is someone to talk to on the Israeli side," Ayalon concluded.
RSS
