In a classic episode of Seinfeld, Kramer is berating
Jerry for hesitating to date the girl whose boyfriend is in a coma.
“Well,” Jerry explains. “I wasn’t sure of the proper coma
etiquette.”
“Simple,” Kramer answers. “You give the guy twenty-four hours to
get out of it. After that, all his stuff is up for grabs.”
We are witnessing one of the most fascinating applications of
coma etiquette; in fact, it might better be called coma politics.
An entire country, in decisions attended by momentous consequences,
is deferring major political shifts in deference to the guy in the
coma. They not only won’t take his girlfriend, they won’t even
touch his policy and the process he got underway.
No, I am not talking about Fidel Castro, who is still a few
gibberings and droolings short of a solid coma. The tragicomic
video they released of him doddering around the hospital corridors
in an age-inappropriate track suit affirms his commitment to Dr.
Alzheimer’s rigorous recovery regimen. That octogenarian is still
the octopus smothering Cuba in his tentacles.
The politician who is running a country “in his sleep” is none
other than that legendary military tactician, parliamentary
provocateur and general bull-in-the-china-shop of Israeli public
life, Ariel Sharon. January will mark the completion of a solid two
years in a coma, an amazingly long time for an 80-year-old body to
cling to life. His family will not consider pulling the plug under
any circumstances; they are convinced that he will pull yet another
phoenix-like rebirth out of his seemingly inexhaustible bag of
tricks.
The Israeli man-in-the-street is less sanguine about Sharon’s
prospects. If he awakens, people expect little; even lucidity would
be a bonus. Yet there is an unspoken agreement that as long as his
coma lasts, his policy will not be jettisoned.
THE CURRENT PRIME MINISTER, Ehud Olmert, began his tenure by virtue
of Sharon’s sudden seizure. He was later reelected by invoking the
spirit of the unconscious leader.
Now Olmert is beset by one corruption scandal after another. He
has a collection of rare pens, each worth thousands of dollars.
Every time a corporate lobbyist wants a favor, he drops by with the
gift of a new pen. That way no one can accuse him of pocketing
actual cash. Then it was revealed that his personal apartment in
Jerusalem was sold to him for a fraction of market value by a
builder whom Olmert had granted development rights on that property
back when he was mayor of Jerusalem. Thus far, the slew of special
prosecutors has refrained from issuing indictments.
On top of Olmert’s personal weakness at this time, the policy of
returning Gaza to the Palestinians unilaterally and then continuing
to negotiate has proven to be a laughable sham. The whole idea was
that having Gaza would increase the area under the control of
Palestinian leaders, so they could establish democratic
institutions of the sort that would put them just a treaty short of
statehood. This was their chance to impress us with their maturity,
their wherewithal, their modernity, their realism.
Instead we get a huge breeding-ground for terrorists, persistent
rocket launching into Israel and general insolence. This past
Saturday a huge crowd, estimated to be over ten thousand, gathered
to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Hamas and protest against the
idea of negotiating with Israel.
To top matters off, the Palestinian Authority no longer even
controls Gaza. Hamas had won some of the key governing posts in an
election, then forcibly ejected the PA people a few months later,
executing a number of them along the way.
None of this has fazed President Bush and Condoleezza Rice, who
are committed to the phantasmagoric view that if Olmert cuts a deal
with Abbas, Hamas will decide it pays to go along. Israelis know
better than to buy such a mirage, a chimera really.
Yet there has been no concerted grass-roots effort to oust
Olmert, even when his poll numbers dropped to 12 percent, down
around U.S. Congress levels. Analysts offer this or that reason for
the curious reluctance of the population to dump the guy,
everything from complex vote-counting calculus to sociological
hypotheses about how hard it is to part from wishful thinking. All
those theories have some truth to them but the real answer, I
believe, is something far less tangible.
It is simple politeness. Coma etiquette. The man is still alive
and no one has the heart to announce officially that although he
sleeps on, his dream has already died.
