Analysis: Olmert Realigns Master Plan By Anshel Pfeffer (Jerusalem Post)
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Excerpts;
The weekend headlines regarding Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s apparent decision to set aside, at least for the time being, his beloved realignment plan were stating the obvious.
It would be political suicide for the embattled prime minister, who will count himself lucky if he manages to avoid a state commission of inquiry on his government’s conduct of the war, to proceed with such a controversial plan now that unilateral withdrawals have proven so disastrous and his personal credibility is in tatters.
As a distinguished graduate of the “never admit you’re wrong, never apologize” school of politics, Olmert isn’t about to say that there was anything flawed with the plan or with his steadfast insistence on going full-speed ahead with it. He merely believes that it’s all a matter of timing. He realizes that to survive as prime minister, he has to devote the next year or so to simultaneously rebuilding the North and his own image.
He hasn’t given up on realignment. Olmert still believes that Israel’s main challenge is the Palestinian question, but instead of addressing it immediately, he hopes to return to it in a couple of years, if he lasts that long.
Olmert’s new master plan is an ambitious, as yet unspecified grand project for rejuvenating the North, transforming the poor border region between Kiryat Shmona and Shlomi into a promised land of prosperity.
He wants to transform his public persona from that of “Ehud the Mover” to “Ehud the Builder.” But social programs and infrastructure building aren’t the kind of the kind of activities that normally fire Olmert’s imagination. That’s not why he wanted to become prime minister and the Upper Galilee isn’t his favorite destination.