1-EU to exert efforts to end crisis in Gaza Strip : Solano. 2-ANALYSIS - Olmert faces battle for survival after Lebanon warBy Matthew Tostevin ,JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Lebanon has a habit of bringing down Israeli leaders.
EU to exert efforts to end crisis in Gaza Strip: Solana(DPA),13 August 2006
RAMALLAH - The European Union intends continuing efforts to settle the ongoing crisis in the Gaza Strip and Palestinian areas, and was looking to launch new talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said on Sunday.The Union would also work toward securing the release of an Israeli soldier held captive in the Gaza Strip for the past seven weeks, he told a news conference in Ramallah following a meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
The abduction by three Palestinian militant groups of Corporal Gilad Shalit during a June 25 raid on an Israeli army outpost led Israel to launch a massive military offensive in the
Strip.Solana stressed that the Palestinian issue stood at the core of the conflict in the
Middle East, and the EU would not let it be overshadowed by other unrest.In another development, he said the EU has been working on finding a new mechanism to run the Rafah crossing on Gaza-Egypt border, and urged Israeli Defence Minister Amir Peretz to reopen the crossing and solve that problem as soon as possible.The crossing has been mostly sealed off since Shalit was snatched on June 25.
ANALYSIS - Olmert faces battle for survival after Lebanon war
By Matthew Tostevin ,
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Lebanon has a habit of bringing down Israeli leaders.
If the war subsides between Israel and Hizbollah guerrillas after a truce due this week, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert faces a battle for his political life to ensure he is not the next. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert attends the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem August 13, 2006. (REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun) Olmert began this war with almost wall to wall national support, said Yossi Klein Halevi, a senior fellow of the Jerusalem-based Shalem Center thinktank who said he had been a passionate Olmert supporter.
He's ending this war with a frayed and wounded nation that feels itself to be leaderless. Despite positive noises from Olmert's allies, Israelis are far from convinced the month-old war since Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers on July 12 counts as a victory. Israel's main
achievement is the provision in a U.N. Security Council resolution for Hizbollah to be moved back from the border so a beefed-up peacekeeping force can deploy.
But the abducted soldiers are still in the hands of Hizbollah which proved it could hold off the army and inflict heavy casualties while raining rockets on northern Israel. Meanwhile, there is no timetable for disarming the group. The war killed more than 1,070 people in Lebanon and over 140 Israelis. Except for Israel's ongoing conflict with the Palestinians, Israel has suffered heavier civilian casualties than in any war since the one at independence in 1948. We did not win,wrote Nahum Barnea in the best-selling Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper. The declaration of the ceasefire allows the war of the Jews to begin.
CURSE OF LEBANON
Lebanese entanglements have proved disastrous for Israeli leaders before. Disillusionment with the 1982 invasion helped encourage Prime Minister Menachem Begin to step down in depression. His defence minister, Ariel Sharon, was also forced out. An attempt to stop Hizbollah rockets with a big offensive was one factor that cost Shimon Peres the election in 1996. Prime Minister Ehud Barak's pullout in 2000 after a 22-year occupation was criticised for being too swift and possibly encouraging a Palestinian uprising. He was voted out in 2001. Olmert has to answer questions such as: Why could Israel not use the Middle East's mightiest army to cripple
Hizbollah despite its vow to?
Why was there a focus on air strikes, that were unable to stop Hizbollah rockets, rather than using ground forces to try to remove a threat to a million people in northern Israel? Why was a major invasion put on hold to allow for diplomacy and then launched once a U.N. resolution was in the bag?
Olmert knows this is the juncture in time at which an entirely different war is going to begin the war over his political future,said Ben Caspit of the Maariv daily. One poll last week showed Olmert's popularity had dropped below 50 percent from over 75 percent near the start of the war. That was even before the ceasefire. Olmert's lack of military nous compared to predecessors has been a concern voiced since his election in March after Sharon's collapse into a coma ended the former general's premiership. There's going to be a monumental eruption,said one army officer, who could not be named. It's already started in the army with generals accusing each other and passing the blame.
HANGING ON
But there is no certainty that Olmert and his coalition will not be able to hang on at least for a while, even if some right-wing rivals are already calling for early elections. There will be a lot of searching questions and backbiting and so on, but I don't think there is a near-term threat,said Mark Heller of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies. It will take a long time before the picture of the fallout is clear. Critical battles will arise over the results of an expected commission of inquiry into the war and also when the financial cost starts to become plainer, requiring budget cuts to other areas of spending.
Doubt hangs over the very future of Olmert's centrist Kadima party, founded by Sharon just before his collapse as a vehicle for a plan to reshape Israel's settlements in the West Bank a
plan now shelved by the Lebanon war. But Olmert's main coalition partner, centre-left Labour, may not be in a hurry to leave. Party leader and Defence Minister Amir Peretz comes out of the war looking no better than Olmert and faces a brewing internal leadership challenge.
The main threat on the right wing is opposition leader and former premier Benjamin Netanyahu. Although he stood beside the government during the war, he has made clear that he would have preferred a heavier military response from the start. If you don't use the full force of the army to confront the worst attack on Israel since its founding, then you have failed as commander in chief, said the Shalem Center's Klein Halevi. Nothing short of a military victory over Hizbollah can redeem this government and even that might be too late to save Olmert. Reuters
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