From: David Dolan
Sent: Monday, January 23, 2006 9:54 AM
Subject: [ISRAELUPDATE] JANUARY NEWS REVIEW
 

Greetings from Jerusalem,
 

Below is my news review and analysis report covering the dramatic events that have shook Israel so far in January.  Due to the sudden ascension of former Jerusalem mayor Ehud Olmert to the prime minister’s chair earlier this month, I detail his background as well as look at how he is projected to fare in Israel’s March 28th national elections, and also what he might do while in power.  I examine how this week’s Palestinian legislative elections and spiraling tensions with Iran might affect the Israeli elections as well.
 

On another related topic, many of you like me have apparently received a plethora of reports in recent weeks of a pending massive terror attack in America.  Some specify today as the target date, while all ask for prayer about this disturbing matter.   Some of the reports are based on actual security information, and others are “words of knowledge” or “prophecies” attributed to various Christian leaders.  The most interesting to me was a report of a dream early this month, attributed to author and former White House official Charles Colson—which included major terror attacks upon America and Israel, and the overthrow of various regional Arab governments by Muslim fundamentalists.  Disturbing indeed!
 

Since I have been asked by quite a few Israel Update subscribers in recent weeks what I think of these reports, I want to address them briefly here.  Like many others, I have been warning that additional Al Qaida terror attacks all almost inevitable at some point.  The real questions are where, when, and how big and “successful” the assaults might be.  World Net Daily and other web sites have carried background reports on this matter for some months, some quoting well-placed sources as warning that Muslim terrorists have succeeded in smuggling some nuclear materials into the United States via Mexico.
 

While definitely expecting more attacks at some point, and probably severe enough ones that they alter the course of history and usher in the biblically prophesied End of Days, I am extremely wary of published reports that include precise projected dates disclosed through private revelations. As Jerusalem author and Bible scholar Lance Lambert pointed out at a conference I attended here in Jerusalem last evening, such date-setting regarding various topics in the past has usually proved incorrect, and is probably a demonic tool apparently designed to discredit the name of Christians and Christianity, especially with young people seeking spiritual truth.
 

So while we should all pray about the ominous threats around us—which are obvious enough even without such “words,” especially in light of Osama Bin Laden’s latest tape vowing to launch more destructive attacks upon America—we must be very careful in my estimation to stay within biblical boundaries and not publish dates or supposedly “exact” details in advance.  Human emotions, wishes and private interpretations can so easily get in the way.  I hope this helps answer some of the queries I’ve gotten.  I do agree that 2006 is likely to be a dramatic year, but that is also not difficult to project given all the upheaval of last year, which began with the aftershocks of the massive Asian tsunami and included the Gaza withdrawal and Katrina disaster.  That this year began with Ariel Sharon’s severe stroke is probably not a sign of calm seas ahead!
 
 

HISTORICAL HOURS
By David Dolan
The Israeli political world was turned upside down in a matter of seconds in early January when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffered a massive stroke while being rushed by ambulance to Jerusalem’s Hadassah hospital.  His immediate complete incapacitation freshened painful Israeli memories of the similarly sudden exit ten years before of another popular, controversial premier, Yitzhak Rabin—felled by an assassin’s bullet in Tel Aviv.
The historic parallels do not end there.  As was precisely the case with Rabin one decade ago, Sharon’s debilitating stroke came after a major Israeli withdrawal, from the Gaza Strip.  In both instances, this was being followed up by controversial government plans to implement further land handovers to the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria.

In late 1995, the planned Israeli pullouts were centered on six Arab towns located there, including from a portion of Judaism’s second holiest site, Hebron.  While negotiations stalled over the town where Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were buried, the other withdrawals were subsequently implemented by Rabin’s successor, Shimon Peres.  In late 2005, Sharon was planning to evacuate another small portion of Israeli-held Hebron, along with unspecified Jewish settlements in outlying parts of Israel’s biblical heartland.  Now, it seems those highly contested evictions will be carried out by Sharon’s formal successor, Ehud Olmert, with strong support from his apparent new deputy, Shimon Peres.

Yet another strange similarity was the fact that the Palestinians were scheduled to hold their first ever national elections when PM Rabin was shot dead.  They were in the final stages of planning their long overdue second parliamentary election when PM Sharon was struck down with a severe hemorrhagic stroke.  One glaring difference this time is evident: While the first election brought the expected stamp of voter approval for PLO chairman Yasser Arafat and his Fatah political movement, the second ballot could bring the fundamentalist Hamas Islamic movement to power.  If Hamas actually triumphs, or even makes an expected strong showing, the political earthquake that shook the region with Sharon’s sudden downfall may be relatively mild compared to the major aftershocks that would undoubtedly follow such an outcome.  At the very least, a substantial Hamas showing would signal another major step forward for the Islamic fundamentalist upsurge that began with the 1979 Iranian revolution.

EHUD OLMERT ON TOP
Born just weeks after American atom bombs ended World War II in mid-1945, sixty year old Ehud Olmert’s overnight elevation to the pinnacle of Israeli power was preceded by many years of careful political calculation.  Widely regarded as a shrewd, if not always totally above board, attorney and politician, Olmert began his long climb to the Prime Minister’s chair in 1973 when he became the youngest person ever elected to the Knesset at just 27 years of age.  One of several ‘Likud party princes’ whose fathers had played significant right-wing roles during Israel’s initial decades, his fortunes rose further when Menachem Begin became the country’s first Likud premier four years later.  Even then, Olmert only weakly disguised his ultimate ambition to rule the country himself one day.

The Hebrew University graduate sat on various Knesset committees and held several cabinet positions in the 1980s and early 90s.  Although he had served as an officer in an elite Golani brigade, Olmert’s actual military experience was quite limited, given that he mainly acted as a reporter for the army’s Bamahaneh (‘In the Camp’) magazine. Still, with Begin’s influential backing, Olmert managed to secure a seat on the Knesset’s prestigious Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee.  He was helped in this venture by his academic brother, Yossi, a well-known Israeli expert on Lebanon.

The rising Likud star was appointed by Begin’s successor, Yitzhak Shamir, as a minister without portfolio responsible for minority affairs in 1988. This came in the wake of the election that year which brought his main Likud ‘young guard’ rival, Binyamin Netanyahu, into the Knesset for the first time following a successful stint as Israel’s UN ambassador in New York.  In 1990 Olmert was handed a higher cabinet assignment when Shamir appointed him Health Minister—which many saw as ironic given his well publicised propensity to smoke fat cigars whenever possible (but at least he is also known as an exercise enthusiast, unlike his portly predecessor).

When Yitzhak Rabin ousted Shamir in the 1992 elections, Olmert wisely decided it was time to temporarily exit the national political stage.  He realized the decade’s headlines were destined to be dominated by the Labour party’s warm embrace of the American-sponsored ‘land for peace’ process, launched by George Bush Senior at an international Mideast conference in late 1991.  Instead of fighting that process with Likud cohorts from the Knesset’s back benches, he would attempt to gain an influential national, and even international, voice as mayor of the Jewish people’s holiest city on earth, Jerusalem.  He defeated aging mayor Teddy Kolleck in the 1993 municipal election, spending the rest of the decade championing the continued unification of Jerusalem under Israel’s rock solid rule.

COMFORT IN ZION
Hoping to reenter the Knesset and assume a leading national government role, Olmert managed to soften his hard-line political image soon after the new millennium got underway.  He suddenly found himself rushing to the sites of a series of heinous  Palestinian terror attacks in many parts of the capital city.  Unless he was away on one of his frequent foreign speaking tours—which were heavily castigated by his local opponents—Mayor Olmert faithfully arrived at the ugly scene on every sad occasion, night or day.  He would later visit wounded victims in hospital, and attend the funerals of those who did not survive the atrocities—offering televised comfort to the multiplying mourners in Zion.

Ehud Olmert had actually attempted to re-ascend the national political stage soon after Netanyahu lost the 1999 national election to Labour’s Ehud Barak.  But he lost the internal party leadership battle to Likud founder and veteran warhorse, Ariel Sharon.  This was partially due to spreading Likud suspicions that Olmert had adopted at least some of the left-wing political views known to be held by his wife, along with some of their four offspring. The mayor would bide his time, sitting comfortably in his new Jerusalem municipality building’s stupendous office with its magnificent view of the nearby walled Old City, waiting to see if the much maligned former general would succeed in returning the Likud to power.  If he failed to do so, as most pundits expected in pre-Al Aksa uprising days, Olmert would get another opportunity to possibly rule the Likud roost.

When Ariel Sharon was swept into power amid widespread Palestinian rioting in early 2001, Olmert realized that a new Likud era was beginning.  If he wanted to eventually have a realistic shot at the Prime Minister’s chair, he would have to swallow hard and ally himself with the perceived ‘ultra-right-wing’ Sharon.

In 2002 Olmert announced that he would not seek reelection for mayor in a municipal ballot scheduled for 2003, but would instead seek a place on the Likud’s Knesset list.  Facing constant rumblings from former PM Netanyahu and his allies, Sharon realized he needed a faithful Likud subordinate in his cabinet.  So he proffered a strong endorsement of Olmert, despite the fact that they had suffered strained relations in the past. Even with such powerful backing, Olmert barely made it onto the list, being extremely disliked by many party kingmakers.  Still, he is now well positioned to win the ultimate prize—becoming Israel’s next elected Prime Minister—even if to finally achieve this longtime goal he had to abandon the very Likud party that had nurtured his rise to power.

All now know that Ariel Sharon turned out not to be the extreme ultra-nationalistic leader that Israeli and international pundits had generally anticipated. Instead, he surprised nearly everyone by becoming a centrist successor to Rabin, Peres and Barak; handing over more disputed territory to the Palestinians while removing some Jewish settlers from their cherished homes. Many analysts point to substantial evidence that it was largely Ehud Olmert, the first Likud politician to publicly call for a unilateral Gaza withdrawal, who played the pivotal role in Sharon’s unexpected political transformation.

HOW LONG WILL OLMERT GOVERN?
In the stricken premier’s significant wake, two major questions now dominate the spinning Israeli political scene: How long will Ehud Olmert serve as Israel’s Premier, and what will he do while in power?

All opinion polls taken in the hours and days after Sharon suffered his massive stroke forecast that his new Kadima party would crush its Likud and Labour rivals even without the comatose PM at the helm. But Labour and Likud analysts think that much of this projected support was a mere sympathy reaction to Sharon’s dire condition, and therefore not a true reflection of how people will actually vote on March 28th.  Evidence that this might indeed be the case mounted as the month wore on, with later surveys showing a small but steady erosion in Kadima’s support amid a significant rise in Labour’s projected fortunes, along with a less substantial upturn for the Likud party.

Possibly indicating a further deterioration in Kadima’s currently anticipated landslide victory, various polls all found that at least six out of every ten Israeli voters chose someone other than new Kadima leader Ehud Olmert as their first choice for premier.  Over 20% picked Netanyahu, mostly citing his substantial governmental and military experience.   A paltry 10% to 12%  named new Labour party leader Yitzhak Peretz as their first choice for premier.  This is not surprising given that the fiery socialist has absolutely no national governing experience (as was also the case with Labour’s trounced 2003 candidate, Amran Mitzna), and seems to have little clue what he might do to revive the shattered Oslo peace process.  To the further chagrin of many party members, the same polls show that Shimon Peres would have secured around 10 additional Knesset seats for Labour, mostly at Kadima’s expense, if he had not been ousted as party leader last November.

Despite his relative personal unpopularity, most political pundits believe that Ehud Olmert will easily emerge as Israel’ next elected Prime Minister.  This is because a substantial number of Israeli voters indicate they see no other viable way forward but the ‘middle ground’ that Kadima has staked for itself, including grudging support for a Palestinian state while maintaining Israeli security supremacy and vigilance, bolstered by physical separation from the Palestinians wherever possible.

WHAT WILL OLMERT DO?
The second question preoccupying the political establishment in the wake of Ariel Sharon’s severe stroke is seemingly much easier to answer: Ehud Olmert plans to implement Sharon’s political programme as much as possible.  This was made clear in the first cabinet meeting the Acting Premier chaired just four days after the veteran PM was incapacitated.  Olmert bluntly told his somber cabinet colleagues that he would “carry out the wishes of Ariel Sharon.”

So the more pertinent question is this: What were Sharon’s wishes and goals, and can they actually be implemented by anyone other than the ‘bulldozer’ himself?

Although it is probable that he held some in-depth discussions with his chief cabinet deputy, the truth is that the stricken premier kept his cards close to his extensive chest.  While promising to virtually fulfill a messianic role by ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and drawing permanent borders for his small country, Sharon revealed little if any details to the public as to how these lofty goals might be achieved.  It was apparent that such a process involved additional Israeli military and civilian withdrawals from Judea and Samaria, but exactly from where and when was anybody’s guess.  Sharon’s endorsement of the American-initiated Road Map peace plan has already been echoed by Olmert, who has also repeated Sharon’s insistence that Palestinian leaders must keep their side of the bargain by disarming and dismantling terror groups before formal peace negotiations can be resumed.

Most pundits assume that while Sharon shared at least some of whatever actual plans he had with Olmert, he probably spoke far more freely with his longtime friend and former political nemesis, Shimon Peres.  So the new Kadima leader may actually need to rely upon his new Number Two—and trust that Peres is not putting words in Sharon’s stilled mouth—if he wants to faithfully implement the unconscious Prime Minister’s wishes.

This apparent reality has left many Likud strategists hoping that, given previously proven widespread public distrust for Peres, many projected Kadima voters will return to their usual Likud home on election day.  Still, they realize that many others will stay put in the new centrist party, partly because they anticipate that Netanyahu will not be able to govern without the support of several small right-wing and religious parties.  Such a Likud-led coalition mix has often been tried before, and usually falls apart rather quickly due to exorbitant financial demands from the Orthodox parties, and/or because of the maximalist political positions maintained by far-right parties.  Both basically seem to be looking for Messiah’s perfect rule—a role that no Likud leader can fulfill.

THE PALESTINIAN EFFECT
One other significant question remains unanswered as Israel prepares to choose a new leader: What effect might the Palestinian elections, and subsequent Palestinian actions, have on the March 28th Israeli ballot?  Most analysts agree that the expected strong Hamas showing will bolster the voting public’s growing sense that no final peace accord is ever achievable with their recalcitrant Palestinian adversaries.  But whether a majority will then buy Kadima’s main argument—that further unilateral action is necessary to cut off whatever territory cannot be easily maintained, while hanging tough on Israel’s overall defence needs—or whether they will accept Netanyahu’s contention that one-sided land pullouts are too risky to take, especially around Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, is not clear.

Analysts say the answer may lie in what actually takes place on the ground between now and March 28th.  If more Palestinian rockets are launched at Israeli targets from Samaria (as has now been confirmed to have occurred at least once in December, and maybe up to six times), this may well strengthen the Likud’s hand.  They add that a plethora of Palestinian terror attacks like the one that left over 20 Israeli civilians wounded in Tel Aviv on January 19th may do the same.   A large-scale Hizbullah attack in the north, probably ordered by Iran and Syria (whose despotic Presidents met together in Damascus the same day as the Tel Aviv attack), could similarly spark a voter shift to Netanyahu’s column.  Indeed, this is exactly what took place in 1996, when initial opinion polls projecting an easy Peres win over Netanyahu were eclipsed by a spate of Hamas bus bombings and Hizbullah rocket assaults during the campaign.

Another increasingly important election issue is the question of who can most effectively deal with the growing threat from Iran.  Both Acting PM Olmert and Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz strongly denounced Tehran’s early January decision to defy international opinion and resume Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme, which experts say could lead to the creation of nuclear weapons.  During a January 16th news conference, Olmert alluded to possible Israeli military action to halt the programme: "Under no circumstances, and at no point, can Israel allow anyone with these kinds of malicious designs against us, to control weapons of mass destruction that can threaten our existence."  Iranian officials hit back hard one week later, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Assefi warning “Israel knows quite well that any military action will produce severe consequences” for the small Jewish State.

With most Israeli security experts and politicians saying that both the grave Iranian and Hizbullah threats must be dealt with rather sooner than later, it seems realistic to forecast that Israel’s next premier will need extra divine wisdom and insight to adequately deal with his heavy responsibilities.  May all who stand with Zion in these difficult days intercede like never before for such gifts to be granted from the Heavenly Throne!  “‘For I will restore you to health, and I will heal you of your wounds,’ declares the Lord.  ‘Because they have called you an outcast, saying: “It is Zion; no one cares for her.”’” (Jeremiah 30:17).
 

DAVID DOLAN

Jerusalem

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DAVID DOLAN is a Jerusalem-based author and journalist who has lived in Israel since 1980.  His new DVD, titled “FOR ZIONS’S SAKE—REPORTING FROM THE LAND OF THE BIBLE,” is now available on both PAL and NTCS versions.  Details are posted at his web site, www.ddolan.com