After the war: scandals rock Israel

An Israeli soldier leads his family out of a military bunker near Metula August 19, 2006. REUTERS/Petr Josek

August 20, 2006

By Jeffrey Heller

JERUSALEM (Reuters) -The president is locked in a sex scandal, the justice minister is quitting over a purported stolen kiss, the prime minister is haunted by a property deal and the country's top general is under fire for stock trading.

Welcome to Israel, after the war.

With a ceasefire in Israel's bitter battles with Lebanese Hizbollah guerrillas in effect for nearly a week, Israeli media have turned the spotlight on a series of scandals.

No criminal charges have been filed in any of the cases. But suspicions of sleaze at the top have darkened the public mood in Israel, where many have begun to question their leaders' conduct of a costly month-long conflict in Lebanon.

Some of the allegations:

-- A former employee at the official residence of President Moshe Katsav says he coerced her into having sex with him. Katsav has denied the woman's allegations, which police are investigating. The scandal is unlikely to have any significant political impact as Katsav's post is largely ceremonial.

-- Justice Minister Haim Ramon announced on Friday he would resign after the attorney general said he was considering indicting the veteran politician over allegations by a former government employee that he forcibly kissed her.

A Justice Ministry statement said the woman accused Ramon of "kissing her on the lips while inserting his tongue without her consent." Ramon denied the charges and said he would prove his innocence in court.

-- Israel's top government watchdog has confirmed it is examining the terms of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's purchase of a Jerusalem apartment for $1.2 million in 2004.

The state comptroller's office said it has not finished looking into the case. The prime minister's office has reserved comment, pending an official approach on the matter by the comptroller.
Olmert's popularity has already taken a beating in the polls, part of a public backlash over his handling of a war in Lebanon that failed to deal a fatal blow to Hizbollah or stop nearly 4,000 rockets from hitting northern Israel.

"The significance is clear: politically, Olmert is a dead man walking," political commentator Ari Shavi wrote of the property row in the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper last week.

But other political analysts noted Israel's next scheduled election is four years away and it was unlikely any of Olmert's coalition partners were interested in bringing down the government after only three months in power.

-- Lieutenant-General Dan Halutz, chief of staff of Israel's armed forces, acknowledged selling off his stock portfolio just hours after Hizbollah gunmen kidnapped two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on July 12 that triggered the Lebanon war.

While regulatory authorities have said he did nothing illegal, many Israelis are questioning why cutting his own losses was on Halutz's mind at a time when consultations were under way on readying Israel's military response.

"I am also a citizen. I also have finances ... the facts are correct but (the media interpretation) is false, tendentious," Halutz said in response.

Several legislators and columnists have called for Halutz's resignation, accusing him of arrogance and adding their voices to a chorus of public criticism over the former fighter pilot's reliance on air power, rather than a ground thrust, in the early stages of the war in Lebanon.