The Day of Atonement is over, and the troubled transportation minister will now have to make some actual choices about his future.
By GIL STERN STERN HOFFMANmofaz studious 224 88 ap(photo credit: AP)
Yom Kippur is over. The cantors have stopped wailing. The Mahzorim have been put back on the upper shelves to accumulate a year of dust.
And the markets selling the four species of Succot are already bustling.
But for at least one man, the soul-searching and the self-flagellation associated with the High Holidays have continued.
For Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz, Yom Kippur began early this year, shortly after 5 a.m. on September 18, when he realized that he would not be declared the winner of the Kadima leadership contest, regardless of whether he had actually won.
Since then, he has spent most of his time at his home in Kohav Yair, engaged in deep introspection about his political past, present and especially about his future. This week, he returned to his job at the Transportation Ministry, and even toured the Haifa port to show that he was taking his work seriously.
Yet his aides said it was clear that his heart was not in it, and that his mind was distracted. He made a point of not attending Kadima's weekly ministerial forum before Sunday's cabinet meeting, because his political future remains undecided.
MOFAZ'S YOM Kippur will only end when he finishes contemplating his direction. While he has not set a deadline, circumstances regarding the progress of coalition talks and chances for an immediate general election will help dictate his future.
If it were up to Mofaz's family, he would have already put his ministerial suit and tie in mothballs alongside his army uniform and ended his lengthy career in public service.
But Mofaz has also accumulated an extended family of political activists and MKs who are still clinging to him, both for their own interests and for what they believe is his own. And there is also a country, which those who know him say he genuinely cares about and believes that he has the unique combination of experience and temperament to serve well.
Confidants who met with Mofaz recently said he was very disturbed by the Rosh Hashana interview that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert gave to Yediot Aharonot - not just because he had thought that it would he himself who was prime minister by then and giving such an interview, but also because of what Olmert said.
Reading Olmert talking about giving up almost the entire West Bank, Jordan Valley and Golan Heights reminded Mofaz of one of the reasons he wanted to be prime minister in the first place: to prevent people who understand security less than he does from doing something stupid.
A source close to Mofaz revealed that he and Kadima chairman Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni discussed Olmert's interview at length in their pre-Rosh Hashana meeting at her Tel Aviv home. What Mofaz might not have told Livni was that his thoughts after reading the interview were about how he needed to be in a position of power to gain influence on the negotiations with the Palestinians, in order to restrain her from making the same concessions as Olmert said he was willing to make.
In talks with his confidants, Mofaz lamented the political mistakes he has made since leaving the IDF, starting with his pledge to remain in the Likud immediately before jumping to Kadima, and ending with his decision to concede the Kadima primary before he was fully aware of the extent of the improprieties in the voting. While perhaps ignoring the results of the Gaza Strip withdrawal, Mofaz said he consoles himself by considering who paid the price for his political blunders.
"I prefer to make mistakes that harm me personally, and not mistakes that harm the people and the state," Mofaz told confidants.
THE REASON Mofaz is planning his future so meticulously now is that he realizes he cannot get away with another major mistake at such a critical juncture in his career. And while Livni would love it if he would come to Sunday's Kadima council meeting to demonstrate party unity, he has no reason to decide his fate before he knows whether the country is headed to elections or to two years of a Livni-led government.
Mofaz raised eyebrows by meeting on Sunday with Shas chairman Eli Yishai, who holds the key to Livni's chances of forming a government.
Yishai reportedly gave Mofaz the impression that he was leaning toward initiating an election, especially if Mofaz would not become finance minister in place of Shas nemesis Ronnie Bar-On.
If Livni were to lose badly to Likud chairman Binyamin Netanyahu, Mofaz could become Kadima chairman not too long after the election. That's what he is likely to hear when he is set to meet with his most hawkish supporters in Tirat Hacarmel on Saturday night. He hinted to MKs who met with him on Tuesday that he might make an announcement about his political future at that event.
Livni's associates have reportedly grown impatient with Mofaz, whom they accuse of stalling in an effort to harm her politically, out of revenge.
Sources close to Mofaz have accused Livni's spin doctors of leaking stories about his demanding a top portfolio, in order to harm his reputation even more than they did during the campaign.
"All the reports about his extorting the Foreign Ministry are intended to harm and weaken him," a Mofaz aide said. "He is facing a personal dilemma. He is a human being and he is entitled to do his soul-searching. All he wants to do is sit and think."
But as they say in the IDF, after every Shabbat, there is a motzaei Shabbat [Saturday night]. And thankfully, Yom Kippur cannot last forever.
Mofaz's friends and advisers say his period of contemplation will end soon. They expressed confidence that he would ultimately decide to become foreign minister in Livni's government - to maximize his current influence on the key issues of the day - while waiting near the top for his next opportunity to become prime minister and to make the changes he wants to make in his party and in the country.
"He is an introspective person with core values," a Mofaz confidant said. "I think that what he has gone through over the past few months would be an impetus for him to continue. I don't think he is the kind of person who runs away from a battle."
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