Olmert will pay
PM left estranged city of Jerusalem over weekend to visit northern residents, eager to hear his assurances for rehabilitation grants. Will he fulfill his pledge to Nahariya hospital?
Olmert will pay 1: On July 5th 1990, while serving as health minister, Ehud Olmert signed the Nahariya Hospital guest book with a pledge that the building of the hospital would be completed quickly, Amen.
This week, 16 years and 19 days later, hospital director Professor Shaul Sasa showed Olmert the pledge with a cynical smile. Interior Minister Ronnie Bar-On, tried to spare him the embarrassment by making a joke: It's not valid, the "statute of limitation" applies here.
A man like Olmert, however, doesn’t flinch at the prospect of meeting the Galilee challenge for attention, particulalry when on the other side of the scales lies a state commission of inquiry and the reserve soldiers' call for his resignation.
Olmert and Bar-On touring the north (Photo: Ronny Sofer)
He learned that Sasa's hospital, the northernmost medical institution in Israel, treated some 1,871 casualties throughout the 34 days of war. This is a high figure for a hospital that only has some 670 beds, and that on average treats some 1,000 patients a month.
He learned that the trained personnel didn't flee the rocket fire, but that almost everyone turned up for work. There was not a single casualty who went untreated, perhaps not in the same way as at the Rambam Hospital in Haifa, but nonetheless treated.
The hospital's director told the prime minister that the emergency room in Nahariya was exposed to Katyusha fire throughout the war. Everyone was aware of the dangers. However, in keeping with Israeli custom, measures were not taken to prepare the home front for the recent Katyusha war.
That’s how a Katyusha rocket missed the oxygen tanks near the emergency room by a mere 50 meters, where dozens of casualties lay at the time. We should thank the lord that that none of the casualties were injured again, and that none of the medical staff required the assistance of their colleagues.
Prime Minister Olmert was grateful for the refreshments, that are not offered so frequently nowadays, and was glad to make yet another pledge in the very same guest book. He made a second pledge in his own handwriting, stating that he would assure the completion of the hospital building. The emergency room, of course, would be top priority.
Professor Sasa and his staff exchanged an amused glance. "Let's pray that the prime minister's signature is worth more than the health minister's signature," said one skeptical senior staff member who accompanied Ehud Olmert, the cabinet minister appointed to rehabilitate Haifa and the north.
Olmert will pay 2: Shimon Lankri smiles readily, is sharp of mind and tongue and is well liked by senior politicians. Prime Minister Olmert and Minister of Interior Ronnie Bar-On, who were guests at his office Thursday, were captivated by his charm.
Lankri, the mayor of Akko, is among those who signed up for Olmert and Bar-On's party. He is a successful mayor, judging by his own testimony, and he brought about drastic changes to the gloomy development city.
He cut unemployment in half, from 18 percent to 9 percent. He raised the average of matriculation graduates from 45 percent to 56 percent, and he aggressively conducted the home font during the war, including the thorough cleaning out of some 700 private bomb shelters full of junk.
Since he is the mayor of a city that lost eight of its sons and daughters during the last war, and where 107 rockets fell, the city deserves to be compensated, and how. Therefore, Olmert and Bar-On left behind NIS 20 million for upgrading Napoleon's Hill to a national park, and an additional NIS 650,000 for the ongoing budget - all strictly kosher state funds. And this is in addition to the NIS 5.75 million provided during the war.
However, Lankri has an appetite, he wants more, and a warning light switched on in Bar-On’s head. Somewhat amused he told Raanan Dinur, the director general at the prime minister’s office charged with the transfer of billions to the north: “You’d do well to tighten your belt, because we are likely to emerge from this situation without our pants on.”
Bar-On is amusing; however the residents of the Negev are not in the least amused by the antics of senior government officials in Akko and the Galilee. Alon Schuster, head of the Shaar Hanegev Council, for example, thinks that Olmert and Baron will not open Finance Minister Avraham Hirchson’s reserve coffers for Lankri.
According to Schuster these funds were allocated to the Negev prior to the war, and were earmarked for laying railway tracks from Beer Sheba to Ashkelon, a project that has been frozen as of late.
He and his colleagues, mayors of the Negev, are eagerly awaiting the promised funds which are currently being dispersed beyond the Carmel mountains in the north. They are shocked at how the government is buying the reputation it lost during the Katyusha war in Lebanon with funds allocated to the Negev.
Olmert will pay 3: The majority of Israeli residents are not familiar with the mayor of Shagur, Ahmed Dabach. However, for residents of Arab settlements in the Galilee such as Dier el Assad and Majdal Krum, he is a celebrated man. However, last Friday he even surpassed himself and became king.
Why? Because Mayor Ahmed Dabach, thanks to his ties with top cabinet brass, provided them with a brand new football pitch, paid for by the Israeli tax payer. God willing, the football pitch will be built, announced publicly Ehud Olmert, Ronnie Bar-On and cabinet minister Meshulam Nahari from the Shas party, who for some reason accompanied them on their tour of the north.
This of course took place to the background of Hizbullah’s rockets, and as Olmert put it: “Rockets were directed at Jews, they struck at Arabs and indicated to all of us that it’s high time that a new set of relations be established between Arabs and Jews.”
The honorable mayor Dabach welcomed the ministers warmly. He stood by his promise that he would make them relevant at a time when the majority of the Israeli public would like to see the prime minister and his defense minister step down.
The cabinet met his expectations, by coming to show the discriminated Arab population that it could be king. By the way, the expectation was based on a previous acquaintance: Dabach’s father was “a close friend of Arik Sharon for many years,” he had spent many hours with the former prime minister on that cold January of last year while waiting outside the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem in the hope of hearing some good news.
Thanks to the wonderful memory of former chairman of the Beitar Jerusalem football team Ronnie Bar-On, number one fan Ehud Olmert recalled the first championship season in 1986. He remembered the green and black clad players who came to Majdal Krum, they won, after which they were almost clobbered, and it made him very happy.
“We’ll build you a new football pitch and we’ll also finance the children’s and youth teams,” smiled the prime minister to the dozens of respected men around the table full of enticing refreshments.
“You handle the senior team, so that it won’t rise up from the third league and play against Beitar," the prime minister joked with them, and they clapped their hands like a merry bunch of kindergarten kids who had just received a treat.
Oh yes, and let’s not forget, the deficit of NIS 75 million in Dabach’s coffers that will be resolved with the funds allocated for the rebuilding of the Galilee.
