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August 7 • 2008
World
policies. Olmert also formed a close
friendship with President Bush.
If at first it seemed that Olmert, the
veteran politician, was leaning where
the political winds blew, his interlocu-
tors soon realized his conversion on
the peace process was genuine. His
wife and children, all well-known
doves, had had an effect on his think-
ing. More substantially, the shock of
the violence of the second intifada
in the early 2000s, which Olmert
witnessed firsthand as Jerusalem
mayor, convinced him that it was time
to tease apart two states, Israel and
Palestine.
"It was a genuine conversion:' said
M.J. Rosenberg, the policy director of
the Israel Policy Forum, the dovish
group that formed a close relationship
with Olmert after his change of heart.
"Olmert's unique value was that he
approached peace as a pragmatist —
none of this starry-eyed Peres stuff. It
was, `We Israelis want to have normal
lives. We want to have nice houses and
take our families to football games
and make money. To do this we have
to lay this conflict behind us.' There
was no mush."
Palestinians, too, appreciated
Olmert as a straight-shooting partner
who treated them as equals. Olmert
lacked the imperiousness of Ehud
Barak or the paternalism of Peres.
It was Olmert's practical vision that
finally won him widespread popular-
ity, and the premiership in January
2006, after Sharon went into a coma
from a stroke. Olmert won the general
elections two months later.
Within months, however, the honey-
moon unraveled. Hezbollah launched
an attack that July, and the Olmert
government's belligerent response
seemed hapless. Israel's air-based war
did little to prevent substantial Israeli
casualties and earned international
opprobrium for the destruction it
caused in Lebanon. Hezbollah also
suffered heavy losses, but rallied as
a political force in Lebanon and is
now a veto-wielding presence in the
country's cabinet.
Hezbollah also has rebuilt its forces
and missile arsenal — to three times
its pre-war size, according to Israeli
estimates.
At the same time, Sharon's 2005
withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, sold
hard by Olmert at the time, also was
coming apart. Hamas terrorists had
driven moderates from Gaza and were
behind daily barrages of rockets into
southern Israel.
The need to isolate Hezbollah,
Hamas and especially their backer,
Iran, drove Olmert to push harder for
peace. It led to the re-launch last year
of peace talks with the Palestinians
at Annapolis, Md., and to this year's
renewed talks with Syria under
Turkish auspices.
In his resignation speech July 30,
Olmert clearly hoped the peace talks
would be his legacy.
"I continue to believe with all my
heart that achieving peace, stopping
terrorism, strengthening security and
creating different relations with our
neighbors are the most vital goals for
the future of the State of Israel," he
said.
"We are closer than ever to con-
crete understandings that are likely
to the basis for agreements in the two
strands of dialogue, the Palestinian
and the Syrian. The moment we
achieve peace we will stand baffled
and wonder how we did not achieve
this earliee
When it came to the corruption
charges, he sounded defiant — a
legacy perhaps of his childhood wean-
ing on the works of Jabotinsky, who
famously counseled followers to "never
surrender."
"I have been forced to battle cease-
less attacks," he said. "Everyone knows
that things have been blown out of
proportion."
❑
Answering
Israel's Critics
The Charge
The Lebanese terrorist group
Hezbollah called on the international
community last week to take steps
to halt Israel's recurring violations
of Lebanese skies, calling the incur-
sions "provocative, unacceptable and
condemned, a blatant violation of
Lebanese sovereignty and an insult."
The Answer
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak
has said that the number of missiles
that Hezbollah possesses has doubled
or tripled in the past two years and
their range has increased, both
violations of U.N. Security Council
Resolution 1701 that ended the 2006
Israel/Hezbollah war. Hezbollah now
has more missiles than before that
war. Israel's flyovers are for defense
and intelligence-gathering purposes.
- Allan Gale, Jewish Community
Relations Council
of Metropolitan Detroit
© August 7, 2008, Jewish Renaissance Media