Crying over spilt milk

The standard definition of 'chutzpah' is murdering your parents and then pleading for leniency on the grounds that you are an orphan.  Our Prime Minister seems intent on taking this working definition to the next level.

While looking over the news this morning I was stunned to see that our Prime Minister had made some remarkable statements about the as-yet-still unsettled settlers from Gaza and the northern Shomron.  Remarkable considering it was his word that those pesky, disloyal settlers were supposed to have taken regarding the terms of their resettlement and compensation. 

Incredibly, this Jerusalem Post article described, "Prime Minister Ehud Olmert lash[ing] out on Sunday at the red tape hampering the resettlement of the Gaza evacuees."

Hellooooo!  Memo to Olmert:  It was on your say so that more than 8000 people were thrown out of their homes and forced to abandon the lives they had built for themselves in the Gazan and northern Shomron communities.  Do you really mean to tell us that you didn't look at the resettlement and compensation apparatus before giving them your word?

According to the article, "While most of the evacuees now live in some form of temporary housing, only 21 families have made it through the bureaucratic process and obtained permission to build permanent homes. It is estimated that some 1,379 families still await authorization to build homes that replicate their Gaza communities. The remaining 300 families are assumed to have sought individual solutions [meaning they got tired of waiting and simply paid their own way out of imposed homelessness and unemployment]."

You have to remember that back in the emotionally charged days leading up to the disengagement there were several themes that came up again and again in any debate over the way the settlers of Gaza and Northern Samaria were responding to messages being sent to them (usually via the media) by the government.

One of these was the issue of the settler's patriotism/loyalty to the state.  The conventional wisdom held that by looking askance at offers of resettlement and compensation, the settlers were demonstrating a profound lack of trust that their government was acting in good faith.

I find it hard to believe that a Prime Minister who, with a couple of phone calls, can place a controlling interest in one of Israel's largest banks in the hands of friends and relatives can't find a creative way around whatever is standing in the way of the promised housing for a population whose lives were ruined at his direction.

For that matter, where are all the pro-disengagement people with whom I debated on and off-line back in the summer of 2005?   Where are those people who told me that the settler's distrust of the government's promises was unfounded and even unpatriotic.  Where are the pundits who shouted me down with statements like "[the settlers] need to do what's best for the State of Israel now and stop being so selfish!"  Why aren't all these people busy asking hard questions of the government they so vehemently defended? 

Can somebody please tell me what the headlong rush was all about back in 2005 if not to simply to cover Ariel Sharon's ample arse in the face of imminent legal woes?  Why was it so urgent that we make a hasty, unilateral retreat from these places without any hope of ensuring peace/stability in the power vacuum we would create?  Why doesn't the responsibility for looking after the Israeli citizens who were literally dragged from their homes deserve the same sense of urgency as the disengagement itself?

And most important, why has NOBODY stepped up to take responsibility?  This, in my humble opinion, is the most pressing question in Israeli politics today, regardless if one is a politician or simply a voter. 

It seems to me that one of the main reasons we, as a country, keep making the same damned mistakes over and over again is that we allow our partisan decision makers to act like some prom queen who just waltzed out of the bathroom with the hem of her dress tucked into the back of her pantyhose.  I'm sorry, you can't simply pretend that uprooting 1400+ families from their homes and lives didn't happen simply because it's embarrassing! 

Even if one tries to honestly say that there was no way of knowing what a security nightmare the disengagement would create (a claim that is still made despite the widespread warnings of exactly what would ensue after the pull-out), the resettlement of the refugees was, and remains, entirely the responsibility of the government Ehud Olmert currently leads.  It happened on their watch, yet they are acting like it is a troubesome, intractable problem inherited from a previous regime.

What can one make of Olmert's statement that, "he had supported disengagement from Gaza and the four settlements in northern Samaria, but not the cumbersome resettlement process that had developed in the aftermath of the pullout."?  It sure sounds to me like Olmert is saying that he was in favor of knocking that glass of milk off the kitchen counter but completely against that big wet mess it made on the floor. 

You simply can't separate responsibility for disengagement from the tragic results!

I contend that there is a time and place to cry over spilt milk... and that time is now!