A Country For A Career

Can anybody explain why on God's green Earth Ehud Olmert has opened "indirect" "peace" talks with Syria, which is diplospeak for "hand back the Golan Heights so Bashar Assad can resume hoarding water and shelling northern Israel"?:

Israel and Syria on Wednesday said they were holding indirect peace talks through Turkish mediators — the first official confirmation of contacts between the longtime enemies.

In statements issued minutes apart, the two governments said they “have declared their intent to conduct these talks in good faith and with an open mind,” with a goal of reaching “a comprehensive peace.”

Both nations thanked Turkey for its help, and Turkey issued its own confirmation. Muslim Turkey has good ties with both Israel and Syria.

There have been reports in recent months of new Israeli-Syrian contacts through Turkey, and Turkey’s foreign minister said earlier this month that his country was trying to bring the sides together. But this was the first official confirmation that contacts have resumed.

It was only eight months ago that the IAF destroyed Syria's clandestine North Korean-built nuclear reactor.  Syria continues to sponsor Israel's enemy to the north, Hezbollah, and their enemy to the south, Hamas.  These factors make it go without saying that Assad cannot be trusted.  So what the bleep - begging your pardon - is Olmert doing?

Ensign Ed wonders the same thing of Assad, but his motivations aren't difficult at all to figure out.  It ought to be common knowledge by now that the best way to wear down the Jews is to make ersatz "peace" overtures to them.  That places Jerusalem in the position of having to go along, as (1) they have spent the last sixty years insisting that all they want is to be left alone in peace, and (2) the anti-Semitic "international community" is also pushing the Israelis to make peace "at any price".  Look at how the "peace process" succeeded in getting the Jewish state to retreat from both the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and allow their Palestinian arch enemies footholds within their post-Six Day War borders.  If the Syrians had sufficient patience, the Golan Heights might be just the downpayment on their concessionary haul.

But Olmert?  He might have more personal reasons for smoking the funny pipe:

Olmert is due to be interrogated by the police again on Friday, in preparation for the pre-trial testimony of 'donor' Morris (Moshe) Talansky on Sunday. Olmert's lawyers, having already lost in the Supreme Court on whether Talansky could testify before trial, are now seeking to lengthen the proceedings as much as possible by seeking a postponement of two weeks in Talansky's testimony. Talansky has already told the police that he gave Olmert envelopes filled with cash that were not to cover election debt. Talansky is insisting on returning to the US on Monday. What remains of the gag order on the investigation is due to be lifted at 8:00 tonight.

So; the Israeli Prime Minister is ensnared in a corruption scandal, and two days before his sugardaddy is to testify in his trial, Olmert announces a "diplomatic breakthrough" with one of Israel's most intractible enemies.  Coincidence?

Likudniks don't think so:

"The recipient of cash envelopes will not touch the Golan," Likud faction chairman, MK Gideon Sa'ar, said Wednesday in response to the announcement by the Prime Minister's Office confirming the existence of indirect peace talks with Syria being conducted via Turkey.

"The PM's announcement confirms that there is no end to this cynicism in playing with Israel's strategic assets for the sake of Olmert's personal survival," Sa'ar said.

Olmert "doesn't have a majority for making concessions on the Golan - not in the Knesset and not among the public," he added. "Shas needs to leave the Olmert government immediately."

Likud MK Gilad Erdan charged that "Olmert has finally proven that he is willing to sell everything, including Israel's security, in order to cause us to forget the severe criminal offenses that he suspected of."

"If Shas, Tzipi Livni and Ehud Barak do not quit his corrupt government forthwith then they are fully complicit in selling the Golan and relinquishing our defense," he continued.

Likud MK Yisrael Katz, who is the head of the Golan Lobby in the Knesset also lambasted the PMO's announcement.

"The prime minister and the president of Syria must thoroughly understand that there is a clear Knesset majority against an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan," Katz said. "More than 61 MKs signed a petition against relinquishing the Golan and they won't allow the prime minister to continue the process."

Neither do some Laborites:

Knesset Member Shelly Yechimovich (Labor), who is associated with the left-wing of the party, has charged Prime Minister Ehud Olmert with cynicism for announcing two days before he testified in a criminal probe that Israel is holding indirect talks with Syria.

"This is a new spin by the Prime Minister, whose objective is to take away attention from the envelopes stuffed with money" that he received, said the former journalist.

On the political left, Meretz MK Zahava Gal'on said she supports talks with Syria, but agrees that Olmert does not have the mandate to do it.

As to the Israeli public at large...:

The War and Peace Index of last month - a survey of 600 Israeli adults conducted by the B. I. Cohen Institute of Tel Aviv University - found that a whopping 75% of Israelis oppose an Israeli withdrawal from all of the Golan Heights for a full peace treaty with Syria, whereas only 19% favor this.

I thought that after the utter debacle the Olmert regime made of the 2006 summer war against Hezbollah and Hamas, he wouldn't last to Labor Day.  Yet somehow he survived.  Now we begin to see why.  A man who has already proven himself to be two-faced (at minimum) was apparently so enamored of power that he was willing to sell himself and his office to the highest bidder.  Given that he's also proven himself to be a fool pretty much from the day he succeeded Ariel Sharon, it's not all that surprising that he got caught with his hand in the proverbial cookie jar.  Attempting a desperate, "big splash" distraction by giving away the critically strategic Golan in the hideously misguided belief that that would buy him sufficient public goodwill to keep his ass in the premiership was simply the next logical step.

Mr. Morrissey's analysis is, as usual, not nearly cynical enough.  Far from the Israelis refusing to sign any agreement a pre-emptive end to Syrian sponsorship of Hezbollah and Hamas, according to the aforelinked Carl in Jerusalem:

Israel Radio reported on its 2:00 newscast on Wednesday that Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem has already announced to the media that Israel has agreed to withdraw to the indefensible June 4, 1967 borders. Israel declined comment (which likely means Olmert did agree). But Haaretz reports that Olmert has given Syrian President Bashar al-Assad a 'secret formula' that has satisfied the chinless ophthalmologist:

An Israeli official said that Olmert gave Syria a "formula" on the Golan Heights "that (President Bashar al) Assad wanted," though the details remain secret.

Another Israeli official familiar with the two country's relations said, "It will be a very long process. The direct talks themselves have not yet started." [emphases added]

The "long process" will evidently be one of public relations backfilling to sell this frankly stunning capitulation to an Israeli populace that bitterly opposes it by the above-mentioned four to one margin.

I'd like to think that this will be the final straw for Olmert, and that he and his risible Kaditha faction would be driven from power with more than metaphorical boot-prints on their buttcheeks, the better to bring the prophetic Benjamin Netanyahu back to the office that La Clinton Nostra stole from him on Ehud Barak's behalf a decade ago.  Just as I would prefer to believe that the Knesset will, indeed, block the "without preconditions" unauthorized quid pro quo that Olmert appears to have offered "the chinless ophthalmologist".  But Olmert did weather his incompetent 2006 military defeat.  I don't know if he's a political Houdini of Bill Clinton's calibre, but another successful escape, and ultimately kissing the Golan bye-bye, can't be ruled out.

It's not unlike if, rather than his brothers selling him into slavery, the patriarch Joseph had sold his brothers instead in exchange for his "coat of many colors".  In times so large, with the Jewish state in unprecedented peril (and that's saying something), can Israelis really afford to keep around so vanishingly small a "leader" who values his own petty corruptions over the survival of his country itself - or is too myopic to even notice that's what he's doing?