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War of the cabinets
Crucial decisions need to be addressed, but can a fractured government do it?
Why, I asked outgoing Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh, is it that wherever the Mideast is concerned, Israel has two governments and not one.
"Not two governments," Sneh corrected me. "Twenty." Olmert's, Peretz's, Livni's, Mofaz's and Lieberman's governments – and there's more.
During his eight-month tenure at the Defense Ministry, Sneh met with Mahmoud Abbas five times, and almost weekly with Saeb Erekat who is responsible for negotiations with Israel on behalf of the Palestinian Authority. Sneh didn't report his meetings to the Prime Minister's Office, just as the Prime Minister's Office didn't report its meetings to the defense minister and his deputy.
Olmert found out about the contents of the meetings from the confidential intelligence material brought to his attention. Fortunately there are Arabs; without them, how would the prime minister have known what his deputy defense minister was doing.
At the Defense Ministry they were convinced that the Prime Minister's Office had no idea about defense matters. At the Prime Minister's Office, they were convinced that the Defense Ministry had no idea. Period. Hence, Olmert and his cronies could promise to remove checkpoints from the West Bank, but the Defense Ministry didn't take these assurances seriously – and vice versa.
The battle against supply of smart bombs to Saudi Arabia was conducted by the Prime Minster's Office without notifying the defense minister. Even talks with America's General Dayton, responsible for security arrangements in the Palestinian Authority, were conducted in parallel, without one ministry being aware of the other's assurances. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that discussions with the Americans exploded.
At the end of May, Sneh told me, Muhammad Dahlan asked for a permit to transfer 1,400 bulletproof vests to Gaza in his bid to prepare his forces against Hamas. The Shin Bet and the IDF refused, arguing that if the bulletproof vests can stop 7.62 diameter bullets (Kalashnikov rifle bullets,) we'll let them have them; but if they stop 5.56 diameter bullets (IDF bullets,) we will not. A test was performed and it turned out that the bulletproof vests were also effective against IDF bullets. Hence, the Shin Bet and the IDF objected to the transfer.
This is tantamount to shop keeping, Sneh told them. Is a nation that has F-15 and F-16 aircraft afraid of bulletproof vests? Former Defense Minister Amir Peretz decided to approve the transfer against the recommendations. Olmert, Sneh claims, refused to make a decision. By the time he had made a positive decision Gaza was taken over by Hamas.
In April 2006, Mahmoud Abbas asked Sneh to approve the transfer of armored personnel carriers, rifles and ammunition from Egypt and Jordan. The Prime Minister's Office procrastinated with the talks until autumn, "Instead of building a common strategy with the Palestinian Authority, we adopted the widest safety margins possible," he said.
He left the Defense Ministry with a heavy sense of missed opportunities. "We are missing a great window of opportunity in our relations with the Arab world," he said. "The enlightened part of the Arab world wants to work with us, but we are paralyzed. We have a partner in the Palestinian Authority, but we are doing nothing on its behalf."
Did you forget how they collapsed in Gaza? I said.
"What did we do in Gaza to prevent it?" Sneh responded with a question. "Predictions of a Hamas victory were realized. For months the Shin Bet warned that Hamas was about to win, but didn't lift a finger to stop the process."
Instead of Peretz and Sneh, Ehud Barak and Matan Vilnai are now occupying the Defense Ministry. Barak may be more hawkish than Peretz, and Vilnai less active on Palestinian issues compared to Sneh, but these are trivial matters.
If Barak's first days in office are a sign of things to come, the battle between cabinet A and cabinet B will only get worse. Barak is openly behaving as someone who has not taken up office to serve under Olmert, but rather, as someone who has come to replace him. His aspiration is legitimate, yet it is difficult to see how it will bode with joint government working sessions.
Fatal decisions pertaining to defense and foreign affairs are waiting to be addressed; how to deal with Iran's nuclear development; how much to accommodate the Palestinian government in the West Bank; how to handle the Hamas government in Gaza; whether to cut the budget and where. These are difficult decisions to make even in a unified government. In a government comprised of 20 different cabinets, it's a much greater problem.
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