October 9, 2008
“I have bad news and good news,” the surgeon tells the patient. “The bad news is that I amputated the wrong leg. The good news is that the other one is going to get better.”
Outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert played the role of the surgeon this week, telling an interviewer how he fell short during his own tenure while offering a prescription for Israeli peace and security that seems both obvious and unattainable.
Preparing to hand the reins over to Tzipi Livni, Olmert said that Israel’s future depends on peace deals that give nearly all of the West Bank to the Palestinians and return the Golan Heights to Syria. He also doubted the tenability of a unilateral attack on Iran.
“Ariel Sharon spoke about painful costs and refused to elaborate,” Olmert told the daily Yediot Ahronot. “I say, we have no choice but to elaborate. In the end of the day, we will have to withdraw from the most decisive areas of the territories.”
The interview marked the culmination of a remarkable transformation of a onetime hawk. No surprise that he was attacked from the right — but left-wingers got their shots in, too, asking why Olmert didn’t press harder for such concessions when he still had the time and the power.
None of Olmert’s statements was a complete shock to Israel’s centrist political establishment, however, nor to the majority of citizens who have long accepted the notion of a two-state solution (the Golan is another matter, perhaps; Israelis may never get used to the idea of relinquishing that lovely, strategic highland). Olmert’s parting shots were not the words of a leader, but of a lame duck who lays the real challenges at the feet of his successor.
But real challenges they are. Israel is in the confounding place of having seen the outlines of a peaceful and secure future, but with negotiating “partners” who consistently refuse to take the actions that will advance the peace process. The Palestinians’ intransigence and worse make political risk-taking almost impossible in Israel. The world should make no mistake — Israel craves bold, visionary leadership. But without partners, even those skilled surgeons will end up losing the patient.
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