Olmert Drops Claim To All Israel And Ignores Military Experience

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The New York Sun

JERUSALEM – After breaking the mold of Israeli politics by leading a centrist party to election victory, Ehud Olmert rang more changes yesterday by installing a government led by politicians with only limited military experience.

Ending the Israeli tradition of governments dominated by war heroes, Mr. Olmert awarded the defense ministry to a former union leader whose army career was limited to national service, Amir Peretz.

The appointment raised derisive sneers from the military establishment, but Mr. Olmert, who worked on the Israeli army journal during his national service, was determined not to be hamstrung by convention.

In another break with the past, he used a speech to parliament to drop Israel’s claim to all of the Biblical land of Israel, including the occupied West Bank.

“The bottom line is that we have to maintain a strong Jewish majority in our country and we must guarantee a defensible area where this majority can live,” he said. “Even if the Jewish eye sheds a tear, even if the heart is torn, we must retain the essence. We must maintain a solid and stable Jewish majority in our country.”

He was speaking before parliament voted to accept the coalition he has assembled in the six weeks since the election.

In the 120-member Knesset a working government needs 61 votes. With 29 seats held by his centrist party, Kadima, Mr. Olmert persuaded three parties to join him: Labour with 19 seats, the religious Shas party with 12, and a single-issue party campaigning for pensioners rights, Gil, with 7.

The number of government posts ballooned to 25 to accommodate all the deals Mr. Olmert had to make in order to persuade the parties to join him, making the government one of the largest in Israeli history.

Mr. Olmert warned that some of the more remote Jewish settlements in the West Bank would have to be evacuated for his partial withdrawal plan to work. In a phrase that put him on a collision course with the settler movement, he described the far-flung settlements as a danger to national security.

The lack of military experience was commented on by a number of Israeli columnists. “Now, of all times, just a moment after Hamas seized control over the territories, a moment before Iran goes nuclear, the two people who decide and determine and seal fates in the state of Israel are civilians without any security experience whatsoever,” Ben Caspit wrote in the Ma’ariv newspaper.


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