Israelis convene talks amid doubt

HERZLIYA, Israel -- Public support for Israel's prime minister has fallen to a historic low. Allies and enemies alike believe the Jewish state lost its recent war in Lebanon. The military's top officer resigned under fire. And the two most important politicians in the country are being repudiated by their own parties.

For Israel's politicians, it's business as usual. But for the Israeli public, the interlocking crises, including allegations of corruption, have prompted a crisis of confidence and palpable rage toward the government.

"They're dancing on the deck of the Titanic," said Gidi Greenstein, a political scientist whose think tank urges the Israeli government to prepare for such long-term strategic threats as Iran and Islamist militants.

This week, the nation's security establishment has been enmeshed in a fierce debate about the nation's future at the annual Herzliya Conference, a national gathering that attracts a who's-who of the Jewish state.

Analysts are debating Israel's military reputation in the aftermath of the Lebanon war and trying to chart an effective approach to Iran.

But to hear the politicians talk, Israelis need to stop acting morose.

"This war had lots of achievements," Defense Minister Amir Peretz declared in his address yesterday, after dozens of speakers had cataloged what they described as the many military and political failures of the last year, chief among them the month long war against Hezbollah.

Peretz, head of the Labor party, is under fire from his own party, whose members want to unseat him. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert also reportedly wants to fire him as defense minister. And Peretz is expected to be one of the major fall guys when a series of high commissions release reports in the next month about Israel's failures during the Lebanon war.

The defense minister took a first step to try to salvage his position yesterday when he appointed Gabi Ashkenazi as chief of staff for the Israeli military. Ashkenazi was not an active duty commander during the war with Hezbollah. A week ago, Dan Halutz resigned from the post, leaving Peretz to fill the position before the completion of the official investigations of the war effort, including the Winograd Commission, an investigative panel led by a respected former supreme court justice.

Many Israelis complain that Peretz presided over a military that failed to disseminate intelligence about Hezbollah to front-line ground troops and sent poorly trained reserves into battle without socks and proper equipment, among many documented breakdowns in the war effort.

The prime minister is nearly as unpopular as Peretz, whose approval ratings poll at 10 percent. Olmert's ratings fell to 14 percent in the most recent poll on Jan. 10 by the Israeli daily Ha'aretz. In another poll on Jan. 18 by Israel Radio, half of the respondents said Olmert should resign.

Olmert is under investigation in a number of corruption cases, one of which has already gone to a prosecutor who is considering whether to issue a criminal indictment. The prime minister, a veteran lawyer and political operative, took his post almost exactly a year ago, when the charismatic retired general Ariel Sharon had a massive stroke.

Never popular to begin with, Olmert has governed as head of Kadima, the new centrist coalition formed by Sharon just before he fell into a coma. Polls show that in the Israeli public's eye, Kadima has failed to establish a coherent platform that can distinguish it from the other major parties, Labor and Likud.

But because of the sagging popularity of those two traditional parties, Olmert has maneuvered his government into an unusually solid position: even though its popularity ratings have sunk to unprecedented lows, the governing coalition is more stable because it includes left-wing Labor, the extreme-right Israel Beitenu, and the ultra-Orthodox religious bloc.

"There is no crisis. A crisis is when the government is about to fall," said Eyal Arad, a top Kadima strategist who wrote the party's constitution.

Public statements by the prime minister and his Cabinet members evince that attitude. No high-ranking officials in the government have admitted to the shortcomings in Israel's preparedness and response to Hezbollah's attack in July 2006.

Indeed, Olmert and Peretz have skirted the concerns about the war, responding to the widely expressed popular malaise with a public relations campaign to tell voters that Israel is strong and that the war was not a fiasco.

A retired general and former chief of staff, Moshe Ya'alon, broke a taboo among the political elite yesterday in an interview with Israel's Channel 2 when he called for the immediate resignations of Olmert and Peretz, instead of hobbling along until the Winograd report comes out.

"We need a leadership that prefers the truth" instead of spin, Ya'alon said earlier yesterday in an attack on what he described as weak decision-making at the top of the Israeli government.

With Israel's military and political leadership under fire at home, hostile Arab leaders in Syria and Lebanon have stepped up their rhetoric, even hinting that another war with Israel could be in the offing.

In an interview on Friday with Al Manar Television, Hezbollah's main media outlet, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah predicted that Olmert and Peretz would soon resign.

Adding to the widespread sense of public distaste for the government, President Moshe Katsav is also under investigation for rape.

One popular joke making the rounds describes Sharon awakening, and asking an aide about the state of the country and its government. He learns with despair of the last year's events: the Hamas electoral victory in the Palestinian Authority, the Lebanon war, the wave of corruption scandals.

"I'd rather be in a coma," Sharon sighs and drifts back into unconsciousness.