Friday, January 27, 2006
Any Chance They'll Bury the Hatchet?
I'm not referring to Hamas. I don't expect there's a snowball's chance in Saudi Arabia Hamas will choose to bury the hatchet and let bygones be bygone. If there is any hatchet burying around Hamas, it'd better be us that's doing the burying.
No, I'm refering instead to our own electoral wonderboys. Our strategic situation was already complicated and fraught with peril before this week's Palestinian debutante ball. The looming spectre of Iran's threat was realy quite enough already, thank you. Now we have whole new nightmares to worry about -- or, if you don't like worrying, then at least to seriously consider.
The next Israeli Prime Minister is must be strategically gifted and will need to get up to speed immediately, preferably yesterday. There isn't going to be a lot of time to waste. Which makes me wonder, is there any chance of Israeli leadership noticing these challenges and deciding to spend the next few months working on actually solving these existential problems rather than frittering the time away working to electorally destroy each other?
And if they were to make such a choice, what options are there? With an election set for March, even a unity government won't let them ignore each other long enough to work together, not unless one of them simply volunteers to lose. Is there a mechanism by which elections are delayed? If such a mechanism existed and were exercised in today's Israeli political climate, would the country accept the move as a reasonable response to extreme developments, or would it be seen as a naked grab for power by Olmert?
Perhaps it's "Patience, Grasshopper" time. Perhaps we can afford to let these events take their own course while we contemplate Ehud Olmert's navel for the next three months. Perhaps there is plenty of time after we wake up, and after we give the new Prime Minister a month or so to sip his morning coffee, before we really have to start doing whatever it is we should be doing.
Whatever that is.
If you really, really liked this -- or even really, really hated it -- there's lots more:
No, I'm refering instead to our own electoral wonderboys. Our strategic situation was already complicated and fraught with peril before this week's Palestinian debutante ball. The looming spectre of Iran's threat was realy quite enough already, thank you. Now we have whole new nightmares to worry about -- or, if you don't like worrying, then at least to seriously consider.
The next Israeli Prime Minister is must be strategically gifted and will need to get up to speed immediately, preferably yesterday. There isn't going to be a lot of time to waste. Which makes me wonder, is there any chance of Israeli leadership noticing these challenges and deciding to spend the next few months working on actually solving these existential problems rather than frittering the time away working to electorally destroy each other?
And if they were to make such a choice, what options are there? With an election set for March, even a unity government won't let them ignore each other long enough to work together, not unless one of them simply volunteers to lose. Is there a mechanism by which elections are delayed? If such a mechanism existed and were exercised in today's Israeli political climate, would the country accept the move as a reasonable response to extreme developments, or would it be seen as a naked grab for power by Olmert?
Perhaps it's "Patience, Grasshopper" time. Perhaps we can afford to let these events take their own course while we contemplate Ehud Olmert's navel for the next three months. Perhaps there is plenty of time after we wake up, and after we give the new Prime Minister a month or so to sip his morning coffee, before we really have to start doing whatever it is we should be doing.
Whatever that is.
