The Emperor and the Washerwomen

The Palestinians say that the best olives and apricots in the Holy Land came from a hill near Bethlehem that has since been seized and turned into a Jewish settlement known as Har Homa.

Even after the Annapolis summit, when the three big players—the U.S., Israel and the Palestinian Authority—promised to really, honestly, truly, work to make peace, the settlers at Har Homa were revving up their bulldozers. That's because the Israeli Housing Ministry, run by a buddy of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, signed off on the construction of another 307 units in Har Homa.

This certainly angered the Palestinians, and even U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rica was a little miffed about this brazen disregard of the Annapolis spirit. It turned out, according to the Israeli daily Haaretz, that two middling bureaucrats gave the go-ahead to Har Homa. And Olmert shrugged his shoulders and said there wasn't much he could do about it. That seemed a pretty lame excuse for the prime minister of Israel and commander in chief.

It reminded me of something I'd heard in Delhi about the Last Mogul Emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar II. He came to the throne late, in his mid-sixties, when his long beard was streaked with silver. He was regarded as a poet and Sufi mystic, but a powerful ruler he wasn't. By the 1850s, the British had reduced his once great empire to all but the Red Fort in Delhi where he resided with his threadbare courtiers and harem girls. One day, while writing a poem, he was distracted by hollering and fighting down by the Yamuna river. Two washerwomen on the riverbank were pushing and yelling at each other. When they looked up and saw Zafar leaning over the balcony, they of course bowed low. After all, his titles included: His Divine Highness, He Who Is Surrounded by Angels, Mightiest King of Kings. “Please, Your Highness, Will you not rule to settle this argument?” And Zafar replied, “ I'm sorry, I was once the ruler of all India and beyond, but now my domain only extends to the walls of my palace. I can do nothing, ladies” And the sad emperor turned back to his un-finished poem.

Zafar had an excuse. The British had stripped away all his power and even struck his face off the Indian rupee. But Olmert doesn't have that excuse. Is Israel's mighty Prime Minister to be stymied by two bureaucrats?

--by Tim McGirk/Jerusalem