|
|
 |
Israeli Army Chief of Staff Resigns
// The Departure of Dan Halutz Deals Another Blow to Ehud Olmert
On Tuesday evening Israeli Prosecutor General Eran Shendar announced that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert may soon face criminal prosecution for alleged influence peddling during his term as minister of finance. Only a few hours later, the news broke that the army's chief of staff, Lieutenant General Dan Halutz, had tendered his resignation. Together, these two events seemed to herald the approaching end of Mr. Olmert's tenure in office. In anticipation of that possibility, the ruling Kadima party has even tapped a potential successor: Foreign Affairs Minister Tzippi Livni. Kommersant correspondent in Jerusalem Grigory Asmolov has the details.
The General Resigns
"We went to bed with the news of the beginning of criminal proceedings against Ehud Olmert and woke up to the news that Dan Halutz had resigned," said the radio announcer yesterday on the Voice of Israel's morning news report. The news of Lieutenant General Halutz's resignation was reported by the Israeli media a few minutes past midnight, and Israeli newspapers immediately rose to the occasion, replacing pages that were already set with front-page articles about the investigation into Mr. Olmert's alleged misdeeds with the latest sensational news item featuring Dan Halutz.
Voices demanding the head of General Halutz began to be raised immediately after the end of the war between Israel and Lebanon in mid-August of last year. Some of the soldiers returning from the battlefield headed not for home but for the rose garden across from the Knesset building, not far from the government chancellery, where they began a hunger strike aimed at forcing the so-called "Lebanese Triangle" – Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Amir Peretz, and Army Chief of Staff Dan Halutz – to resign.
The disgruntled soldiers placed particular emphasis on the responsibility borne by their commander, the army chief of staff. Lieutenant General Halutz is an especially popular target for such criticism because he is an air force man: in the opinion of his critics, he was incapable of correctly assessing the consequences of operations involving troops on the ground, a blindness that led to numerous blunders. Nevertheless, until the most recent developments, none of those in the "triangle" were convinced to resign. Instead, it was Major General Udi Adam, the chief of the Israeli Northern Command, who stepped down first.
General Adam, whose father, also a general in the IDF, was killed during the 1982 war in Lebanon, explained that his departure was not an admission of guilt in the failure of last summer's campaign but rather a response to tension that had arisen between him and the IDF General Staff. In particular, General Halutz was known to have wanted to fire him while the military operations in Lebanon were still going on. His resignation was followed by that of the division commander who was responsible for securing the Israeli-Lebanese border. Suddenly, the whole top of the chain of command under Lieutenant General Halutz was gone, leaving just the chief of staff himself holding down the fort.
Those in his inner circle say that the general has been busy analyzing the outcomes of the battles and trying to rebuild the army. On his orders, more than fifty commissions were created after the war to investigate the actions of the different branches of the IDF during the Lebanese campaign, a step that was without precedent in the history of the Israeli army. Former IDF Chief of Staff Dan Shomron headed the commission charged with investigating the decisions made by the General Staff itself, which came to some grim conclusions. In its report, the commission said that Dan Halutz was incapable of fulfilling the task set before him, which was to stop the hail of rockets fired into Northern Israel by Hezbollah militants; that he had been seriously behind schedule in launching ground-based operations in Lebanon; and that he had hampered the troops in the field by automatically passing along contradictory orders from different military authorities. Nevertheless, Mr. Shomron recommended that Lieutenant General Halutz remain in his post, arguing that he would be the most effective at rebuilding the army and that a change of horses in midstream would lead to internal squabbles among the army's leadership at the expense of effective implementation of the commission's recommendations.
After the report was made public at the beginning of January, Dan Halutz confirmed that he had no intention of leaving. "I answer to those who stand behind me, and I have not heard them express any such wish," he said. General Halutz maintained that he would only step down if the government commission under the direction of retired judge Eliahu Vinograd, which was investigating the army's actions during the war, found him guilty and recommended that he quit his post. Things were thus expected to remain temporarily calm at least until the Vinograd commission releases its report in February. However, Dan Halutz recently decided to change his tune. "Today, after the investigative process has been completed in the IDF, and after a draft has been set for applying the lessons of the investigation in the framework of the IDF's 2007 working plan, I feel a sense of pride for having completed what I set as a goal for myself at the end of the war in Lebanon, and I exhausted my responsibility," he wrote to the prime minister in his resignation letter.
The Prime Minister Under Investigation
The resignation of Dan Halutz has pushed aside another equally important piece of news: on Tuesday evening, Israeli Prosecutor General Eran Shendar ordered the police to open an investigation against Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. The investigation centers on the government's sale by public tender of a controlling stake in Leumi, one of Israel's largest banks. The call for tender was issued by the Ministry of Finance, which at that time was headed by Mr. Olmert. It is alleged that the prime minister illegally intervened in the tender to help two associates of his, an Australian billionaire and former Israeli citizen named Frank Lowy (whose net worth is estimated at around $40 billion), and Daniel Abrams, an American businessman, acquire the bank.
It was reported on Tuesday that one of the main pieces of evidence against Mr. Olmert is a memo in which representatives of Mr. Lowy and Mr. Abrams lay out their clients' requests for changes in the tender conditions during a meeting with Israeli Finance Ministry representatives in a New York hotel. At the time, their requests were turned down. However, according to the Israeli media, the memo, on paper sporting the hotel's logo, surfaced a few days later in the hands of the finance minister at a meeting concerning the tender, where Mr. Olmert changed the conditions of the tender as requested. Incidentally, Mr. Lowy and Mr. Abrams eventually declined to participate in the bidding, and the bank was acquired by other buyers.
Police sources say that a preliminary investigation, though it pointed to the likelihood that Mr. Olmert was guilty of a punishable offense, failed to yield unambiguous conclusions. Thus, the investigation materials were turned over to the prosecutor general's office with no recommendation for further action. Nevertheless, Mr. Shendar decided that the information he received from the police was sufficient to open a criminal case against Mr. Olmert.
In the opinion of observers, it is highly unlikely that the case will go to trial. On Tuesday the Israeli prime minister expressed certainty that he will emerge from the crisis unscathed. "I am proud of the privatization of Bank Leumi, and I hope that the investigation will be concluded as quickly as possible, in order to dispel these groundless suspicions," said Mr. Olmert.
The Two Remaining Cases
However, most observers believe that Ehud Olmert is being overly optimistic. The prime minister could really find himself in hot water if the prosecutor general decides to open a criminal investigation into two other cases that involve him. The first concerns supposed illegal appointments made in the Small Businesses Authority by Mr. Olmert during his tenure as minister of industry and trade, and the second centers on the prime minister's Jerusalem home: in January 2004, the house was purchased from Mr. Olmert for the impressive sum of $2.7 million by the businessman Daniel Abrams of Bank Leumi fame. Mr. Abrams then turned around and rented the house to its former owner for a paltry $2,200 per month. Many see this is a veiled form of bribery.
Another factor that will seriously erode the prime minister's position is the resignation of Dan Halutz. The departure of the chief of staff means that almost the entire military power structure responsible for the war in Lebanon has stepped down. Only the two at the very top remain in their posts: Defense Minister Peretz and Prime Minister Olmert. Like for Mr. Olmert, the clock is ticking for Mr. Peretz, and not just because of the Vinograd commission's possible conclusions. In May, the left-wing Avoda party headed by Mr. Peretz will hold party leadership elections, in which opinion polls say Mr. Peretz has almost no chance. For Mr. Olmert, the moment of truth will likely be the publication of the Vinograd commission's provisional conclusions in February. If any comments in the report target the head of the government personally, the fallout may well spell the end of the Israeli prime minister's career.
The ruling Kadima party is already filled with alarm at the situation and its possible outcomes. Public opinion polls show that if the Israeli elections took place today, Kadima would lose its position in power to the right-wing Likud party, with Avoda coming in second. The party's leaders are desperately searching for legal means of averting early elections in the event that Ehud Olmert steps down. If they are successful, a different member of the party leadership, most likely Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister Tzippi Livni, will take over the prime minister's chair.
Grigory Asmolov
All the Article in Russian as of Jan. 18, 2007
|
|
|
