February 13th, '05
Oslo Again

While back in the States, I was recently called to task for not updating my Israel Diary as often as I used to. It's useful to hear a different perspective from what we hear in the news, I was told.

I made the obvious (and true) excuse: I've been busy, and the pressures of raising my kids and holding down my day job make it difficult to spend so much time up on a soapbox...

But that's only part of the story. One of the reasons I have not been so voluble lately in "explaining" Israel is that I find Israel's governmental decision-making process a complete mystery.

Remember when Ariel Sharon last stood for election? His opponent was former mayor of Haifa, Amram Mitzna. The sole item on Mitzna's election platform was "unilateral withdrawl from the Gaza Strip." You may also remember that Mitzna was defeated by a landslide.

Now Ariel Sharon has adopted Mitzna's platform. When his own Likud party voted against pulling out of Gaza, he declared the election was "irrelevant." When his own cabinet ministers were going to vote the withdrawl bill down, he simply fired two of ministers, ensuring a majority for the aye-sayers.

Does this sound like "the sole democracy in the Middle East" to you? I didn't think so.

And the strangeness goes on. Sharon and the newly-elected leader of the Palestinian Authority have announced a ceasefire. But the terrorist groups in Gaza have said they won't abide by it. And missiles keep raining down on family homes and farms in Gaza -- and occasionally spread into the Negev as well -- while we sit back and wait for the PA to protect us.

As Carolyn Glick put it so well in this week's Makor Rishon newspaper (translation mine):

Given the reports of continuous missile attacks on Gush Katif during this "Era of Peace," it is sufficient to hear radio commentator Aryeh Golan ask what Israel could possibly have done that so enraged the Palestinians to realize: we're back at Oslo.

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