Netanyahu. Clumsy leadership
Photo: Gil Yohanan
Barak. Acting like commentator, not decisionmaker
Photo: AP
We’ve become a joke
Lifting of Gaza blockade latest low point achieved by Netanyahu-led government
On Monday, people in Gaza started eating coriander, sweets, pasta and jam, while we in Israel are the only ones who continue to eat dirt. This is the case when we have a rightist government with two left feet, a clumsy leadership that leads us from one nadir to another; every act it takes, which aims to rectify a previous crisis, merely pushes us into a new low in terms of our public image and deterrence.
Why deny this? We’ve turned into a joke. There is no state in the world today which doesn’t know that Israel only understands force, and that our prime minister – the man who invented the notion of “reciprocity” and developed an entire anti-terror doctrine – is the first to capitulate to terror, boosting Hamas’ regime with his and his government’s decisions.
Contradictory Interests
Avi Trengo
Israel fails to utilize flotilla crisis in order to finally disengage from Gaza
On Monday, the prime minister attempted to explain why Israel decided to lift the blockade on Gaza. He had two options for doing this: First, to honestly and boldly say that he decided to comply with a request by the EU to lift the siege, and that therefore he wants Europe to announce that there is no longer any need for sails of protest and no legitimacy for ships heading to Gaza. That way, we would at least gain something from this affair.
Yet instead of doing it, Netanyahu chose to explain to the Israeli public why lifting the siege is the right thing to do, arguing that it “pulled the rug out from under the propaganda claim that there is a humanitarian crisis in Gaza.” However, any fool would immediately ask: If that’s the right thing to do, why haven’t we done it a year ago? Why has the blockade lasted for three years, and why did we need a failed operation such as the flotilla raid and massive international pressure in order to drag Israel into a decision it doesn’t truly want?
Yet it can go the other way too: If the siege was indeed necessary, what suddenly made it unnecessary if not our failed conduct vis-à-vis the flotilla and later on? Netanyahu can keep on telling us tales, yet he cannot evade the facts: the decision to lift the blockade is not part of a diplomatic move, it boosts the radicals, weakens the pragmatists, and avoids a solution for the Gilad Shalit problem.
And as if this isn’t enough, the Quartet already announced Monday that the easing of the siege is insufficient.
Isn’t it a disgrace?
Netanyahu attempted to shift the responsibility for the Gaza blockade back to the Olmert government. Yet he’s not the only one. Suddenly, everyone shirks responsibility for what up until now was seen as a mandatory policy. Netanyahu shifts it to Olmert, Olmert shifts it to Barak, and Barak shifts it back to Olmert and even claims that for a while now he’s been thinking that the siege needs to be lifted.Isn’t it a disgrace? Our government has been in power for a year and a half now, yet it still refers to the policy of its predecessor. A defense minister, who was serving as defense minister when the siege decision was taken, talks about it as if he is some kind of commentator and not the man who made the decision. What’s going on here? There’s not even one person in this country who can take responsibility?
Yet the most outrageous thing is Netanyahu’s statement regarding captive soldier Gilad Shalit. While his parents, Noam and Aviva Shalit, were being told that the government is lifting the siege, which up until now was considered the main pressure lever for a swap, Netanyahu announced: “We are examining other ways to secure Gilad Shalit’s release.”
What do you mean “examining other ways?” Was the blockade the only way examined thus far in an effort to bring Gilad back home? Did the Israeli government not examine other options for the past four years of captivity?
