A forum of seven ministers that advises Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, faced battle on two fronts when it met in Jerusalem on Sunday.
Internationally, the government is struggling to frustrate calls for an international inquiry into an Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla last week, which left nine pro-Palestinian activists dead – while at the same time meeting American demands for a full investigation.
At home, ministers face a flanking movement by the parliamentary opposition, Kadima, which is maneuvering to take responsibility for an Israeli inquiry away from the government and hand it to the State Comptroller, Micah Lindenstrauss.
By the time the Seven disbanded, well into the night, they were no nearer a decision on either issue. In the next few days, Netanyahu will need to fight a holding action to keep an inquiry from sliding out of his control.
All of the Seven, including Netanyahu and his defense minister, Ehud Barak, are already mired deep in controversy. It was they who approved an operation to storm the flotilla – apparently expecting commandos to meet no resistance, as indeed happened when the navy boarded another Gaza-bound ship, the 'Rachel Corrie', a few days later.
Yet some of the Seven have begun to cast doubt on their leaders, claiming they were not given adequate opportunity to examine the facts. A committee of inquiry poses no small risk to all of them. From their standpoint, the ideal panel would not pay too much attention to decisions that led to the mid-ocean battle but focus instead on supplying legal justifications. Ministers are confident that Israel can calm the diplomatic storm a little by proving its actions were valid under international law.
At the same time, any inquiry will have to answer activists' claims that troops who stormed the 'Mavi Marmara', the lead ship in the flotilla, deliberately targeted civilians. This will worry ministers less, as it will turn the world's gaze from politicians to the military.
And yet Israelis, already tetchy about constant accusations from abroad of Israeli 'war crimes' in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, are likey to prove extraordinarily sensitive to yet another attempt to pillory the IDF. Ministers will need to set clear boundaries: Individual commandos will doubtless escape testimony. But what about their senior officers, including the commander of Shayetet 13, the elite unit that intercepted the protest boats?
Meanwhile, Kadima hopes to use the State Comptroller as a crowbar to prise apart Neta coalition (perhaps, even, with the long term aim of joining it, at the expense of Yisrael Beiteinu). The last major independent inquiry, the Winograd report into IDF failures in Lebanon in 2006, speeded the decay of the Olmert government, which eventually sank beneath a quagmire of corruption. Inquests are easily started. But it is hard to know where they will end.
In Lindenstrauss, Kadima has a willing accomplice in its mission to steer a path around the government. Not only is the Comptroller sure to discover points of principle that are well within his remit as national watchdog: if past form is anything to go by, the merest whiff of scandal will send him rushing to shock Israelis and heap new humiliation on their leaders.
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