2006-03-15-jericho jail raid

By Ira Sharkansky

JERUSALEM—It could not have been better for Ehud Olmert. The Palestinians were clearly at fault. Commentators from several points on the political spectrum concluded that they had violated an agreement, whereby the killers of Israeli Tourist Minister Rehavam Zeevi would be incarcerated in Jericho. Americans and British jailers were meant to guarantee the deal, but they signaled that they would be leaving because the Palestinians were not living up to their end of it. Palestinian officials had said the men would be released. Twenty minutes after the Americans and British left, the Israeli army surrounded the prison, and announced to the prisoners that they could surrender or be killed. The process took some 9 hours to play itself out, and concluded on prime time news. The bad guys who said they would fight to the death surrendered when army bulldozers began to knock down the walls of their compound.

All this two weeks before the election. It showed that Olmert can insist on keeping agreements, and the good fortune that the army could do its part with a minimum of Palestinian bloodshed, and no Israelis wounded. Arabs protested that it was illegal. The mobs of Gaza protested by burning the British Council Library and kidnapping a number of foreigners who had come to provide them with humanitarian aid. One of those kidnapped, and then released, was an American teacher of English who said that he understood and sympathized with the Palestinians. Americans do not know how the Palestinians suffer, he said, from the daily killings by Israeli forces. At this point the CNN anchor accused him of exaggerating. The teacher insisted that the Palestinians were suffering. His students told him so.

The leadership of the Meretz party said that a diplomatic solution would have been better. The head of the European Union expressed his "worry" about the action. Europeans said they would have to repair the damage done by Israeli forces. The British Foreign Minister told parliament that the Palestinians had proved themselves to be unreliable. Some critics said it was insulting to force the Palestinian jailers and other prisoners to march out of the facility wearing only their underpants. That is the drill when the object of concern might be wearing an explosive belt. Presumably those freed will recognize that they have gotten away with their lives, even at the cost of some embarrassment. The leaders of Israeli political parties who stood to lose what Olmert's party won said that it was the only decision possible, and was timed not for the Israeli election but to counter the likelihood that Palestinians would free a group of killers.

Mahmoud Abbas was in Vienna when it happened. The leaders of Hamas are still trying to put together a government.

Olmert's opponents to the left are saying, "It can't be the case that there is no one to talk to! How are you going to make peace?"

Yesterday's situation indicates that there is no one to talk to. Olmert cannot make peace with a Palestinian partner. He will have to go it alone. Now it seems that he knows how to do it. Peace may not be in the cards. There is a limit to the opportunities that an Israeli leader can create.

Sharkansky is an emeritus member of the political science department at Hebrew University in Jerusalem