Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Suddenly in Sharon's shoes

The career Israeli politician quietly holds together Ariel Sharon's new centrist party. But could he fill his seat?

By SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN
Published January 9, 2006

	[AP photo]
	Ailing Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's presence is the empty chair and gavel next to acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert at the weekly cabinet meeting Sunday. With Sharon in grave condition from last week's massive stroke, the 60-year-old Olmert is now at the helm.

In 1999, while Israel was in the midst of a heated election campaign, Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert gave a qualified endorsement of then-prime minister and fellow Likud Party member Benjamin Netanyahu.

"What I really want is for him to stop being a politician and become a statesman and leader," Olmert told the St. Petersburg Times . "He needs to be ready to say unpopular things to constituents. Statesmanship is precisely this - the ability to look beyond immediate interests to the more distant future."

To a certain extent, Olmert could have been talking about his own political evolution. Over the next six years he would drop some of his hawkish views, leave the right-wing Likud and join a new political party determined to crack down on terrorism yet find a way to make peace with the Palestinians.

And, as unlikely as it might have seemed at the time, Olmert would end up as prime minister and Netanyahu as his biggest rival.

With Ariel Sharon still in grave condition from last week's massive stroke, the 60-year-old Olmert is now at the helm as Israel faces some of its toughest challenges in years. Whether Olmert can meet them is very much an open question.

"He's not the most charismatic. His resume is not the most impressive. But I think he's capable," said Yossi Mekelberg, an Israeli expert at London's Royal Institute of International Affairs.

"He's not the kind of leader who goes in front of everyone, like Sharon or Rabin or Barak. I think if Olmert is to be successful, it is leading as a team. If he can manage to surround himself with a good team, this is his main strength."

Olmert already is working to keep Sharon's new Kadima party intact and moving along its centrist course. He is expected to offer former Prime Minister Shimon Peres a key Cabinet post in the interim government to keep him from returning to the Labor Party and taking others with him.

Founded just two months ago, Kadima is so new as to "be in gestation," said Yehezkel Dror, an expert on Israeli politics at Hebrew University. "Everything was focused on Sharon, who was a very dramatic person and did a dramatic policy shift."

Although polls show Kadima would still do well in the March 28 parliamentary elections, that could reflect a sympathy factor. Once the reality of Sharon's absence sets in, Olmert could find himself in a fierce battle for prime minister with Netanyahu and Labor Party leader Amir Peretz.

For Olmert, it will mean persuading Israeli voters that he is more than just a professional politician.

Although he served in the army, Olmert never had the kind of flamboyant military or guerrilla career that turned others into national heroes and ultimately, prime ministers.

Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir were pre-independence leaders of the Israeli underground. Ehud Barak's daring commando raids - including one in which he dressed as a woman - became legend. And Sharon fought in or masterminded every Arab-Israeli war.

Olmert, by contrast, is a lawyer who was first elected to Israel's Parliament at the relatively youthful age of 28 and re-elected seven consecutive times.

"He entered as a champion fighting against corruption and organized crime, and in a short while he made quite a bit of money," Mekelberg said.

"I'm not implying that anything was not kosher," Mekelberg hastens to add, but he notes that Olmert's transformation from crusader to well-heeled business lawyer rubbed some of the luster from his image.

Many Israelis also find Olmert a frosty personality with a grating manner of speech.

"All the time he looks like he's yelling," said Gideon Rahat, a political scientist at Hebrew University. "He doesn't look sympathetic."

Nonetheless, Olmert was elected Jerusalem's mayor in 1993 and held that difficult job for a decade. The city is sacred to three major religions - Judaism, Islam and Christianity - and the scene of frequent tension not only between Arabs and Jews, but also secular Jews and religious Jews.

"It's a very complicated city," Olmert told the Times during an interview in early 1999. At the time, Arabs were complaining that his administration had short-changed them on municipal services and building permits, while Orthodox Jews had just held a huge rally to protest what they considered the antireligious "tyranny" of Israel's Supreme Court.

Some Jerusalem residents viewed Olmert as an absentee mayor who had no real commitment to the city other than as a springboard to higher office. He acknowledged he spent a lot of time abroad - he had just returned from Florida - and had considered running for prime minister.

Instead, he supported Netanyahu, although Olmert criticized his handling of the 1998 Wye River peace accord. Bowing to U.S. pressure, Netanyahu had agreed to turn over part of the West Bank to the Palestinians only to later accuse them of reneging on their pledges to curb terrorism.

"To go to Wye and sign an agreement, then say, "By the way, I realize (Yasser) Arafat doesn't fulfill his commitments' - didn't he know that before?" Olmert said. "That's not statesmanlike."

Netanyahu lost to Barak.

As he spoke that day in 1999, Olmert sat in the airy, sun-filled lounge of a new five-star hotel. Jerusalem was in the midst of a building boom as it prepared for an expected flood of visitors during millennium celebrations in the Holy Land.

But the tourism bonanza was cut short the following year when Sharon, whom many Palestinians consider a war criminal, made a provocative visit to a Muslim holy site accompanied by scores of riot police. The incident helped spark four years of violence between Israelis and Palestinians.

As suicide attacks killed dozens, Sharon portrayed himself as the only one who could bring security to Israel. He defeated Barak in 2001 and two years later, Olmert joined the Cabinet as deputy prime minister and minister of labor, industry and trade.

Less ideological than many other Likud members, Sharon and Olmert realized Israel couldn't remain both a democracy and a Jewish state if it continued to occupy the Gaza Strip with its rapidly expanding Arab population. The decision to withdraw Israeli troops from Gaza and parts of the West Bank last summer infuriated many Likudniks but drew broad public approval.

Olmert, who once opposed relinquishing any land captured in the 1967 Mideast War, was among the most vocal supporters of the Gaza pullout. He also expressed regret that he had opposed the 1978 Camp David peace accords, in which Menachem Begin agreed to Israel's withdrawal from the Sinai in exchange for peace with Egypt.

In November, saying Likud "cannot lead the nation to its goals," Sharon founded Kadima. Olmert followed him into the new party and became the presumed No. 2 though Sharon never designated a successor.

Now Olmert is the clear No. 1. He must hold together his party and his country at a time of domestic turmoil. And he must prepare for an upheaval in Palestinian politics when voters in Gaza and the West Bank vote for a new Parliament Jan. 25.

"The challenges ahead are massive," said Mekelberg of the Royal Institute.

"What happens if the Palestinian Authority becomes even more lawless? What happens if Hamas fares well? What's Olmert going to do? He was never elected to be prime minister but he will have to function for the next 21/2 months - and 21/2 months in Middle Eastern politics is a long time."

--Susan Taylor Martin can be contacted at susan@sptimes.com

[Last modified January 9, 2006, 00:57:08]