A Daily Analysis
By Marc Schulman

June 22, 2008 Political Showdown This Week

Politics or more correctly whether the Olmert government will survive, is now dominating the news. Olmert is now fighting furiously to hold on to power. The labor party has stated that it is going to vote in favor of bill to disperse the Knesset on the first vote. Olmert stated that he will fire all the labor ministers if they vote in favor of dissolving Knesset. What does it mean? If the labor party votes on a first vote for the dispersal it does not mean that the government falls. It requires three votes to actually disperse the Knesset, and the labor party is attempting to put pressure on Kadima to call for primaries and replace Olmert. Olmert is trying to call their bluff, since if he fires the labor ministers, the government will fall. Olmert hopes that labor does not want elections, and will back down. In the meantime he is fighting to stop primary elections in Kadima. Why is he fighting so hard? I guess no one will ever know but he clearly does not care about the interests of the country, only his own.

Meanwhile there seems to be some glitch in the agreement with Hezbollah. The Prime Ministers office tonight leaked the word that Hezbollah has now increased the terms for the release to include Palestinian prisoners. This may be a case of second thoughts, questioning whether releasing live prisoners is appropriate to release for receiving in return what is expected to be corpses. There is some talk of the IDF declaring Hezbollah captives as dead, and then calling off the deal. Its not clear what is going to happen.

If you have not seen it read today's NYT article Israel in a Season of Dread