Tens of thousands of Israelis gathered at a mass rally in Tel Aviv on Thursday night to call for the resignation of the Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, over his failings in last year’s war in Lebanon.
Although the rally served to highlight Olmert’s deepening unpopularity, the prime minister appears to have weathered, at least for now, the worst of the storm that followed a highly critical report from the government-appointed Winograd commission into the war.
The rally, in Rabin Square — scene of the assassination in 1995 of the then prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin — was a demonstration of the deep frustration and anger many Israelis feel at the conduct of their government, both in last year’s war and in a series of scandals involving accusations ranging from rape allegations levelled against the President, Moshe Katsav, to corruption.
Olmert’s popularity ratings have been in single figures. Opinion polls this week suggest three-quarters of the population want him to resign.
Among those gathered in Tel Aviv were reservist soldiers who fought in the war, relatives of some of those who died, and an array of critics of the government from the left and right wing.
Ofer Winestok (25) a student who voted for the Labour party in the last election and served in the infantry in the Lebanon war, said: ”There was no leadership in this war. I saw how it was and they just reacted to what happened. The orders changed every few minutes; nobody knew what has happening or what were the targets.” He wore a T-shirt bearing a photograph of his cousin Guy Hasom (24) an infantry soldier killed on the last day of the war. ”The government needs to resign. They’re not qualified to do their jobs,” he said.
The rally alone is unlikely to be enough to unseat Olmert and his coalition government but it offered echoes of previous demonstrations of Israeli street power. Protests in 1974, after the Yom Kippur war, eventually brought the resignation of the prime minister, Golda Meir. Tens of thousands gathered in the square in 1982 to protest against the invasion of Lebanon.
Malcolm Dash (69) who fought in the Yom Kippur war, said: ”Our government has failed, completely and utterly, and there is no room left for them. They have no plan or programme, and all they are doing is looking after their own seats. In any other nation they would have resigned by now.”
He said the capture of the two Israeli soldiers on July 12, which triggered last year’s war, had needed a response but not a 34-day conflict. ”They took us into a war when it should have been a reprisal.”
But Dash admitted that such protests were unlikely to topple the government. Olmert’s real battle for power took place among his Kadima party colleagues. Most of the 29 Kadima MPs have now sided with him, despite Tzipi Livni, the Foreign Minister, calling on Olmert to resign on Wednesday. She refused to step down herself and failed to gather a momentum of support within the party.
On Thursday she was given harsh treatment in the Israeli press and was described uncharitably in the Yedioth Ahronoth as ”all-talk Tzipi”. Ma’ariv, another paper, called it ”her smallest hour”.
Livni, who has been regarded for many months as the best candidate within the party for the premiership, may have damaged her political career. Some of Olmert’s aides have called for her to be sacked and suggested her departure would come, if not now, then in a reshuffle soon. Although she has distanced herself from those most criticised for the conduct of the war, Livni is widely seen by Israeli analysts as having been too cautious to seize the opportunity of bringing the party with her when she called for the prime minister’s resignation.
Olmert argues that he should remain in office to correct mistakes he admits he made in the war. The Winograd commission, which investigated the government’s handling of the war, issued a damning litany of ”very serious failings”.
However, Olmert is still in a weak position. Party leadership elections within Labour, his coalition partner, are due this month. A new leader might pull Labour out of the coalition. Even if Olmert survives that disruption, he can expect more scathing criticisms in July or August when the Winograd inquiry reports on the later stages of the war. – Guardian Unlimited Â