Ha'aretz editorial (Friday): Leadership in twilight

[Jack Rabbit]

From Ha'aretz (Tel Aviv)
Dated Friday January 30

Leadership in twilight

The suicide bombing on the midtown Jerusalem bus yesterday that killed 10 people and wounded dozens more shocked Israelis out of the strange celebration of the prisoner exchange with Hezbollah and back into the grim reality that is the country's everyday life. For some time, security officials have been warning that the recent relative quiet on the Israeli side is illusory, that barely a day goes by without some plot foiled or a new terror alert, and that there is no way the defense forces can guarantee total prevention of attacks.
This grim reality, which many people naturally want to repress, perhaps explains the sudden effervescence that gripped the public as the deal went ahead - a deal that is flawed both politically and morally. A less tense and frustrated society, with a leadership less preoccupied with by its political survival, would surely respond with reservations to the unwise and grotesque lopsidedness of the prisoner exchange.
While the public follows, amid much emotion, the return of the bodies of soldiers who were killed in the line of duty, and with much curiosity the return of a possible criminal or possible adventurist to the bosom of his family, dozens of people are being killed. The leadership's indifference to the daily killing of Israelis and Palestinians sits incongruously with the enormous efforts the government invested in bringing about last night's fete, marking the return of those who were known to be dead.
Indeed, the paralysis of leadership on both sides of the conflict has accompanied the ceaseless acts of killings - and to a significant degree encouraged them. On the Palestinian side, the impotence of Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia is evident to all. Aside from barren rounds of talks with the terror organizations in Gaza, he has not taken any step that proves he intends to carry out the Palestinian commitments under the road map.

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