As a result of the botched war against Hezbollah, Ehud Olmert's government has been listing like a wounded duck for months. Olmert had entered office with the promise of breaking through the the traditional Labor-Likud stalemate on the the Palestinian problem through the bold platform of unilateral withdrawa. He has been reduced to fighting for his political life.
It is therefore understandable that Olmert would seek to steady his faltering government by bringing in another party into the government to serve as ballast. And it is also no suprise that he has turned first to Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beteinu party, which can serve as a counterweight to his fractious Labor ally inside the coalition while keeping Bibi and Likud in the political wilderness.
Olmert sees Lieberman as simply another merchant at the Israeli political shuk. In this, he is deeply mistaken. Lieberman quite openly fancies himself as an petit Putin. After all, Lieberman launched Yisrael B'Teinu by railing against the "excesses" of Israel's law enforcement and indepedent judiciary. (Lieberman is the only politician in Israel whose main problem with the judiciary has nothing to do with its controversial forays into religion or national security, but rather for simply upholding its mandate to enforce Israel's criminal laws. Finally, the Israeli branch of the Russian mafia had a party concerned about its needs.)
It was not until the past election that Lieberman was able to broaden his appeal beyond the Russian community - redrawing Israel's borders to exclude much of its Arab population. In doing so, Lieberman took the Sharon/Olmert demographic argument, used to support unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank, to a logical, if disturbing, extreme. The argument is seductive - if Israeli Arabs want to identify with the "Palestinian," let them be Palestinians.
Despite his stated position that the Arab majority areas of the Galilee should be excised from Israel, Lieberman opposes Olmert's plan to withdrawal from the West Bank. He rejects any tangible steps towards preserving a Jewish democracy. He is content to merely demagogue against Israeli Arabs as a means to increase his own power. Unlike Olmert, Lieberman is not interested in tangible steps to preserve a Jewish democracy - or democracy at all for that matter.
Which brings us to Lieberman's current pet issue - replacing Israel's fractious parlimentary system with a presidential system. It doesn't take any imagination to figure out who Lieberman envisions as the future Israeli presidente, unchecked by the inconveniences of parlimentary compromise - and if he got his way with additional "reforms", unshackled by an Israel's agressively indepedent judiciary.
Olmert believes he can "control" Lieberman, that if he buys enough time, he can find a way to move forward either with or without the cover of negotiations with the Palestinians. He may view this latest tactic as essential to moving forward against the greatest threat to Israeli democracy. But in doing so, he is exposing Israeli democracy to a threat that while less obvious, may no less dangerous.