Given Peres, Barak and Olmert's track record, Netanyahu should ignore their advice. Last week, three senior figures – Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak, and Ehud Olmert - demanded that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu do everything, immediately, in order to salvage the talks with the Palestinians.
The tone of their voice not only conveyed great concern for our future, but also moral validity. The demanding tone of these words, and the eagerness with which they were quoted by the media, portrayed these message as though they were a supreme diplomatic decree.
After all, all three figures are former prime ministers. Their full life experience is at the basis of their incisive recommendation to freeze, at once, settlement construction and establish a Palestinian state.
The problem is that their experience is bad. Very bad even. Peres, Barak, and Olmert already led Israel in the past through the paths of the diplomatic process and brought it to a dead-end.
One of them initiated a sensational agreement with Arafat that ended up exploding in our faces. The second one dragged us to the infamous conference at Camp David. The third one came up with the foolish disengagement idea. All three of them were sent to the opposition before their terms in office expired, or alternately, dragged their party to the opposition because of their great failures.
Trusting the Arabs too much
Reading the political map is apparently not their strong suit. All three of them got terribly lost in the dense topographic area through which they now make pretenses of guiding Netanyahu. They believed the Arabs too much, while doubting the warnings of Jewish defense experts.
For these reasons, there is no need to be overly impressed by the trio's latest recommendations, as incisive as these may be. Olmert, Barak and Peres should even be prevented from serving as diplomatic advisors, based on the same logic that prevents Eli Zeira, the tragic hero of the Yom Kippur War, from making a living through intelligence work.
Should Netanyahu take their advice nonetheless, he too may have trouble making a living in the future. He should therefore listen to them very carefully, and then do the exact opposite.
Ynet News
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