On May 3rd, over 100,000 people gathered in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square for a mass rally calling on Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz to resign.
MK Ami Ayalon, one of the two leading candidates for the Labor Party leadership, said he hopes the demonstration would help uproot the Olmert government. “When 80-90 percent of this square is full with people calling on the government to resign the public’s will should then be met with political action,” he said. [Ynet, 5/3/07]
“The Kadima Party must begin preparing to choose a replacement for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, senior Kadima officials said yesterday in response to a public statement by [former Prime Minister] Ehud Barak urging Olmert to resign. Barak [who is not considered a Labor dove, but more of a centrist] is one of the two leading candidates for the Labor Party leadership, and the other, Ami Ayalon, announced several days ago that he would not serve in an Olmert government should he win the May 28 [Labor party] primary. Thus Barak’s statement, ending several days of silence on the issue, effectively sounded the death knell for Olmert’s government, Kadima officials said.”
“Immediately after last summer’s war, Barak and Olmert formed a strategic alliance. They conversed frequently, and both had planned on Barak eventually replacing the current Labor Party chairman, Amir Peretz, as defense minister. Olmert believed that this would help to rehabilitate his battered government, and Barak even made this the centerpiece of his primary campaign, saying that his goal was to replace Peretz as defense minister in order to deal with the country’s security and diplomatic challenges.”
“However, the Winograd report’s scathing critique of Olmert’s performance in the Second Lebanon War resulted in growing public pressure on Barak to demand the prime minister’s resignation, as Ayalon did. Barak tried to avoid taking a public stance on the issue, but eventually, opinion polls showing that a majority of the public wanted Olmert to resign convinced him that he had to distance himself from the premier.”
“In response to yesterday’s press conference, Barak’s rivals for the Labor leadership attacked him, saying that his remarks were ambiguous and did not clearly distance him from Olmert.”
“Ayalon said that if Labor wants to gain the public’s trust and return to power, it must speak out clearly. ‘The Israeli public is sick of a leadership based on manipulations and demands an honest leadership,’ he said. ‘After I am elected, my party will not allow Olmert to continue in his post and will work to establish a national rehabilitation government without Olmert. A government headed by Olmert cannot rehabilitate anything, because Olmert has completely lost the trust of the Israeli public.'”
[Ha’aretz, 5/9/07]
Interview with Ophir Pines-Paz, Chairman of the Knesset’s Internal Affairs and Environment Committee (Labor)
Discussing his demand that Prime Minister Olmert resign and the Labor Party’s role in the government
(IBA Reshet Bet Radio, 07:25 (Gmt+3) May 06, 2007
(Translated from Hebrew)
Q: Are you already sitting in front of the Prime Minister’s residence? You are being accompanied by Motti Ashkenazi.
MR. PINES-PAZ: Yes, I am with Motti Ashkenazi[Ashkenazi was a 33-year old reserve captain in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) “who helped spark the movement that led to the resignations of Prime Minister Golda Meir and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan after the Yom Kippur War of 1973. He was so outraged at the leadership of the war that he started a protest in front of the Prime Minister’s office. Moshe Dayan and others underestimated him, with Dayan saying, ‘The people have said their piece, and no demonstration or rally will bring down the government.’ After three months, Golda Meir’s government resigned.” ]
There will also be additional people there. Quite a few other people plan to join us for the demonstration. This gathering is in front of the Prime Minister’s residence and it is very important in my opinion, especially in light of the extremely impressive and meaningful demonstration that took place at Rabin Square, that the momentum be maintained since the Prime Minister is refusing to “draw his own conclusions” [a Hebrew euphemism for “resign”].
Q: Are you demanding the resignation of the Prime Minister, or are you demanding early elections for the Knesset?
MR. PINES-PAZ: We are demanding the resignation of the Prime Minister, and on this occasion the resignation of the Defense Minister as well, in light of the Winograd report. They must draw their own conclusions.
Each day that passes in which the Prime Minister refuses to get the point, while at the same time staying in his post, is in my opinion an act of adding insult to injury, since the Prime Minister saying that he will fix the wrongs is not acceptable. The main shortcoming mentioned in the Winograd report is the Prime Minister’s conduct himself, and the way to fix that shortcoming is by replacing him.
Q: Can Shimon Peres fix this shortcoming? Would you like to see him as a candidate backed by the Labor party, by Kadima? And we’ve heard that he is also supported by Shas as well as Yisrael Beitenu, according to news reports this morning. Even Shimon Peres himself does not disqualify this option.
MR. PINES-PAZ: To intervene in Kadima’s affairs in this way that – we are insisting that the Prime Minister must leave – is extreme and not acceptable politically. This is done only in the wake of the Winograd report and the scandalous corruption that sticks to Olmert’s government.
We, at least I alone, will not recommend to Kadima who should be leading it, or who is suppose to lead the next government. There are, in Kadima, a number of candidates who in my opinion are appropriate for this post. Someone who can carry out a coalition bargaining process with us on the ‘day after’, and Shimon Peres is definitely one of them.
Q: But if it is possible to understand the rationale of such a move, it consists of two phases. In the first phase, the Labor party must threaten to dissolve the coalition with Kadima, which in turn will topple Olmert.
And in the second phase, Kadima will select its candidate for the position of prime minister. So if from your standpoint as a Labor party man, and considering Peres’s past as the Chairman and leader of this party, you still haven’t told us who you prefer?
MR. PINES-PAZ: …it is up to Kadima to act. This is my message to my friends, including [the Labor party’s] ministers, members of the Knesset and the Labor party Central Committee members – our party today is the one that has to and will determine what will appear in today’s Israeli politics.
The Labor party must express politically the collective will of most of the Israeli public, which is moral and principled in nature. What the Labor party must do is to arrive at a decision, which calls on the prime minister, Ehud Olmert, to draw his own conclusions and to resign. Otherwise it must reach the decision to leave Olmert’s government. These are the right decisions.
Q: But if you are touching on the subject of ‘what the majority of the public desires’, then according to the polls, most of the public wants Netanyahu as the next prime minister.
MR. PINES-PAZ: The majority of the public gave Netanyahu and the Likud 12 mandates a year ago. The public does not want Netanyahu or the Likud…Indeed, the problem is that Netanyahu’s image of being popular is mostly artificial. It stems from the fact that Netanyahu is the only alternative the public sees who is not a part of the failing Olmert administration. This is the main problem.
The moment that the Labor party starts leading, instead of following, and will set an agenda for the Israeli public, elect another leader instead of Amir Peretz, and arrive at proper decisions for running itself, I am certain that the Labor party will receive broad public support. The wide support Netanyahu enjoys at present will shift elsewhere.
When there is one single player on the stage, while all the rest are huddled into what is probably the most failing government in the history of the State of Israel, what can you expect? …This is the result of an extreme situation of lack of leadership within all of the major parties, the Labor party and Kadima. And this situation in Israeli politics must change.
We, of the Labor party, the party that has led the state from the beginning, the party which the founding fathers came out of, have the historic task of mending the political situation in Israel.
I will spare no effort in seeing that the Labor party lives up to this most difficult assignment, that it must not fail being in the historic position in which it now stands.
