http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=14544
As senior politicians fall, Israeli citizens are left with a choice: revenge or justice
Date: 18 / 08 / 2006 Time: 17:51


Bethlehem - Ma'an - Nasser Al Lahham, Ma'an's Editor in Chief, writes:

The Israelis wait for the Israeli Minister of Justice, Haim Ramon, to submit his resignation from his post on Sunday over an immoral charge, and they expect that President Moshe Katsav, will also have to submit his resignation on the same charge. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his wife will be interrogated over allegations of receiving bribes amounting to $500,000, while the Minister of Defence, Amir Peretz, and the Chief of Staff of the military, Dan Halutz, both face down newspaper front pages to submit their resignations quickly. Meanwhile the former Internal Security minister Tzachi Hanegbi, receives an indictment over administrative corruption, lying and cheating, and has expired as a politician.

An Israeli newspaper has revealed that the elderly Zionist, Shimon Peres, has met secretly with the US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, to discuss Iranian nuclear capability and is also not far away from accusations. Likewise Tsipi Livni, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, has been accused by politicians of failing politically when she rejected the Rome summit and failed to include the issue of the two captive soldiers in Lebanon in the text of resolution 1701.

Despite the existence of investigating commissions and indictments, the Israeli press, did not reveal until today that the soldiers who had occupied Lebanon suffered from hunger and thirst in the field and were looking for the dead bodies of Lebanese resistance fighters in order to loot their food and water to stay alive.

In the first political development in the Palestinian arena since the Lebanon war, Olmert said that his plan to withdraw from the West Bank has been postponed until further notice. Meanwhile the Palestinians, who offer five martyrs on the altar of their independence have conducted a demonstration in the streets of Gaza to support Lebanon and its resistance. At the Gaza demonstration, Khalid Al Batch, the leader of the Islamic Jihad Movement, proclaimed that the Israeli army no longer held the prestige it had before.

Now in Israel, two main parties are fighting. One party calls for revenge against Lebanon, Palestine, Syria and Iran, and for the re-establishing the stature of the military, and the other calls for a more rational approach; a return to the negotiating table quickly to repair the paths of dialogue with the Arabs and Palestinians.

30% support the first party and about 30% also support the second party, while the remainder remain silent, awaiting the first accounting and expecting the coup that the leadership in Tel Aviv must also be predicting, to decide whether to align themselves with the first or second.

Whether the Palestinians wanted it, or not, the ball is now thrown in their playground and they will play a crucial role in pushing the Israeli society into the arms of the first party or to laps of the second party, and if we want to know what will happen in Tel Aviv, we should know what is happening in Gaza.