Who's in the bunker?

[bemildred]

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert boasted during a visit to Tiberias last week that while he was touring the northern communities with his head held high, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was holed up in a bunker. The prime minister did not realize that hiding in a bunker is not only a physical state but also a psychological state - and certainly a political one.

The answer to the question of who is under siege two weeks after the war, Olmert or Nasrallah, is not an obvious one. Nasrallah has gone underground, but his leadership within his organization remains firm and his position in the Arab world has become stronger. Olmert's chair on the other hand, is shaky. To tell by his mood, the prime minister's advantage is hardly unequivocal. Is the political distress and depression in which he is mired what he hoped for when he ordered the Israel Defense Forces to open its campaign on July 12?

One does not need Freud's touch to know Olmert would do anything to turn back the calendar to July 11. Today he is engrossed in a desperate struggle for survival, his agenda has changed to the extreme, his mood has become somber, the logic of his government's existence has come crashing down, and his popularity has dived to a unprecedented nadir.

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Arrogance, even if it is hollow, is not a useful prescription for directing affairs of state. What is worrisome about Olmert's latest statements is not only their haughtiness but also their motive. The prime minister unwittingly revealed his mood at present: He is haunted by the failure of the war in Lebanon and is trapped by an indomitable ambition to slough off the shame of this image. The state now needs a level-headed leader who is not subject to the traumas and failures of the war, one who can take a sober look at the diplomatic and security situation. The leaders who carry in their consciousness the fresh burns of the campaign and the disgrace it caused them personally are liable, even unconsciously, to subjugate the country's needs to selfish considerations of image.

Haaretz