Olmert calls Barak shameful, insidious

Government meeting sparks harsh battle of words between Kadima, Labor heads. PM: ‘Defense minister made comments that cannot refer to anyone but me regarding honoring coalitional agreements’

Roni Sofer
Published: 09.07.08, 16:27 / Israel News

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert went on an unprecedented offensive on Sunday afternoon against Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

At the end of the governmental meeting, Olmert scorned his most official coalitional partner saying his actions are, “shameful, with an incomparable inability to see yourself systematically violate the coalitional agreements and leaking information from private conversations.”

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The harsh incident took place at the end of a heated governmental meeting caused by Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann’s proposal.

At the end of the meeting, the government’s ministers voted 13 to 11 to transferring the discussion to the Knesset's Constitution, Law and Justice Committee.

“The defense minister made comments that cannot refer to anyone but me regarding honoring coalitional agreements,” said Olmert.

"An incomparable lack of ability to see oneself is needed in order to make claims on the violation of agreements. There is not one agreement that you and your party did not violate along the way, I am shocked,” said Olmert.

“You Barak, come to talk about violating agreements? I am not talking about personal matters right now, this is unbelievable rudeness,” the prime minister said attackingly.

Omert continued and said, “I will not discuss the personal issues now, I will talk about the fact that not a day passes by in which coalitional agreements aren’t broken by you or your party.

“There is almost no rule that you did not breach in order to make things easier on yourselves as opposed to the acceptable democratic procedure,” he said.

The prime minister used the example from the ceasefire discussions and said, “You personally wanted to make a decision regarding the ceasefire without conducting a discussion in the government and cabinet,” said Olmert.

“You had the audacity to go to the media and claim that three weeks earlier the prime minister is the one who called for the meeting while you yourself told me then, that we shouldn’t bring this to a meeting so that we won’t, heaven-forbid, remain the minority,” revealed the Olmert.

The angry leader did not stop there and added that “you are a preacher. It would be one thing if you told me this face-to-face, then I would have answered you face-to-face.”

According to Olmert, “I do not leak information from face-to-face discussions but I want to emphasize that what I am saying here has nothing to do with personal matters; this was done by leaking information and acting insidiously information was leaked, by leaking supersensitive information to which I am unable to respond.”

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