Escaping Forwards

THE GERMANS call it "die Flucht nach vorne" - escaping forwards. When the situation is desperate, attack! Instead of retreating, advance! When there is no way out, storm ahead!

This method was successful in 1948. At the end of May, the Egyptian army was advancing on Tel Aviv. We - a very, very thin line of soldiers - were all that stood in its way. So we attacked. Again and again and again. We suffered heavy losses. But we stopped the Egyptian advance.

Now Ehud Olmert is applying the same method. His situation is desperate. Most people in Israel do not doubt that he has received large bribes in envelopes stuffed with dollars. The Attorney General is liable to indict him any time, and this will compel him to resign.

And lo and behold, at the most critical moment, just before the most damning details come out, a joint statement is issued simultaneously in Jerusalem, Damascus and Ankara, announcing the start of peace negotiations between Israel and Syria, with Turkey acting as mediator. The talks will be based on the principles of the 1991 Madrid Conference, meaning the return of the entire Golan Heights.

Wow!!!

IN THIS, too, Olmert is the worthy pupil of his predecessor and mentor, Ariel Sharon.

Sharon was up to his neck in corruption affairs. In one of them, the so-called "Greek Island affair", the Israeli millionaire David Appel paid huge sums to Sharon's son, a novice, for "advice". At the time, too, it seemed that the Attorney General could not possibly avoid issuing an indictment.

Sharon's response was sheer genius: the Separation. Separation from the Gaza Strip. Separation from the Attorney General.

That was a gigantic operation. In a minutely orchestrated melodramatic performance, the Gush Katif settlements were dismantled. Together with several army divisions, all police forces - the same police that was supposed to investigate the Sharon family's business affairs - were deployed in a breath-taking national endeavor. The peace camp supported, of course, the evacuation of the settlements. The corruption affairs were all but forgotten.

The separation, which was carried out without any dialogue with the Palestinians, has turned the whole of the Gaza Strip into a ticking bomb, and now Ehud Olmert has to negotiate a cease-fire. For Sharon, though, the entire exercise was a success. If he had not suffered a stroke, he would still be Prime Minister today.

The lesson did not escape Olmert.

AESTHETES MAY exclaim: Phooey! We should not countenance such a dirty trick! We cannot agree to a peace conceived in sin!

Maybe my aesthetic sense is blunted. Because I am ready to accept peace even from a totally corrupt leader, even from Satan himself. If the corruption of a politician causes him to do something that will save the lives of hundreds and thousands of human beings on both sides - that's OK with me. Didn't the philosopher Friedrich Hegel talk about the "cunning of reason"?

The Bible recounts that when the army of Damascus laid siege to Samaria, the capital of the Kingdom of Israel, four leprous men brought the news that the enemy had fled (2 Kings, 7). The Hebrew poetess Rachel wrote, alluding to this story, that she was not willing to receive good news from lepers. Well, I am.

Conventional wisdom has it that to make peace, one needs a strong leader. Now it appears that the opposite also works: that a weak leader, almost submerged in troubles, whose term in office could come to a sudden end at any moment and whose coalition stands on feets of clay, a leader who has nothing to lose - he too may risk all to make peace.

THE PLOT may move on from here in several possible directions.

The first possibility: it's all "spin" - an American term that has become Olmert's middle name. He will just stretch the negotiations out like bubble gum, as he has been doing with the Palestinians, and wait for the storm to blow over.

It will be difficult for him to do so, because Turkey is now a partner in the game. Even Olmert understands that it will be sheer folly to annoy the Turks, who are risking their national prestige here. Turkey is a very important partner of our security establishment.

Whatever comes of it, Olmert's agreement to conduct negotiations based on the return of all the Golan is an important step forward. Coming on top of the previous undertakings by Yitzhak Rabin, Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, it defines a line of no return.