MIDEAST: Olmert Is Taking a Long Time Sinking

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Analysis by Peter Hirschberg

JERUSALEM, Apr 3 2008 (IPS) - Ehud Olmert’s most outstanding achievement during his first two years as prime minister is the fact he is still in office. The Israeli prime minister, who has just marked the second anniversary of his March 2006 electoral triumph, has turned political survival into an art form, defying incessant predictions of his demise by his political colleagues and many of the country’s leading political pundits.

Few believed he would survive the Lebanon war that raged in July and August of 2006. Olmert had launched the military campaign in response to the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah, but with the military unable to defeat the Shia guerillas in southern Lebanon and with thousands of rockets fired by Hezbollah landing daily on northern Israel until a UN-brokered ceasefire ended the hostilities, Olmert’s public standing was shattered.

His popularity ratings dropped to low single digits – the lowest ever recorded for a serving prime minister. Few believed he would survive an interim report on the war delivered by a government panel of inquiry which determined a year ago that he was guilty of “a serious failure in exercising judgment, responsibility and prudence.”

But Olmert has weathered the storm and stabilised his government. What hasn’t survived is the key pledge he made during his campaign two years ago. In a rare display of political forthrightness, Olmert told Israeli voters exactly what he planned to do: following on from former prime minister Ariel Sharon’s withdrawal of the army and the settlers from the Gaza Strip, Olmert said he planned to do the same in much of the West Bank.

But that plan was shelved immediately after the Lebanon war, and it has remained there ever since. The withdrawal from Gaza had been conducted unilaterally, with Sharon refusing to negotiate with the Palestinians. At the time, a vast majority of Israelis applauded unilateralism, believing that while the Palestinians were not a reliable negotiating partner, the occupation was no longer viable.

But Israel had also withdrawn unilaterally from Lebanon, in May 2000, and the renewed violence there shattered public support for further unilateral moves. The fact that Palestinian militants began firing rockets into Israel from Gaza shortly after the withdrawal there in August 2005 further undermined support for Olmert’s plan for another unilateral withdrawal in the West Bank.

Olmert, though, does not appear to have abandoned the rationale that lay behind his plan for a West Bank pullout: if Israel does not disengage from Gaza and the West Bank, which are home to some 3.5 million Palestinians, he has argued, the country will find itself being compared to apartheid South Africa as the demographic balance tilts in favour of the Palestinians and the current Jewish majority in Israel becomes a minority. (Based on current growth rates, within a decade the combined number of Arabs living in Israel and in the territories will begin to exceed the number of Jews living in Israel and the settlements.)

If the two-state solution collapsed, Olmert said in an interview late last year, Israel would find itself facing “a South African style struggle for equal voting rights, and as soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished.”

“The Jewish organisations,” he continued, “which were our power base in America, will be the first to come out against us because they will say they cannot support a state that does not support democracy and equal voting rights for all its residents,” he said. The bottom line, Olmert was telling Israelis, was that once there is an Arab majority, equal voting rights will mean that Israel will cease to exist as a Jewish state.

The comments, which came on the eve of a U.S.-led peace summit in Annapolis, Maryland last November, were part of the Prime Minister’s attempts to drum up public support for renewed negotiations with the Palestinians. The talks did restart but they have limped along for four months and have so far failed to produce any tangible progress.

The Lebanon war has not been Olmert’s only problem. After declaring that all issues at the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – the future borders of a Palestinian state, the status of Jerusalem and of Palestinian refugees, and the fate of the settlements – would be on the negotiating table, he announced a few weeks ago that Jerusalem was no longer up for discussion.

His announcement came after the religious Shas party, which is part of Olmert’s ruling coalition, made it clear to the Prime Minister that if Jerusalem was discussed, he would have to do without them. For Olmert, the math is simple: if Shas leaves his coalition, he will be robbed of a parliamentary majority and condemned to an early election he has little chance of winning.

Opinion polls consistently show that the leader of the centre-right Likud party, Benjamin Netanyahu, would emerge triumphant if an election were held now, and Olmert’s ruling Kadima party would disintegrate, dropping from its current 29 seats to around 12. Not surprisingly, Olmert is in no hurry to head to the polls.

Hobbled by the war in Lebanon and by coalition threats, Olmert seems to be treading water in negotiations with the Palestinians. But, with growing talk in the political arena of elections being held in a year’s time – they are officially scheduled for late 2010 – the Prime Minister will have to begin swimming soon.

Some argue that Olmert’s best – or only – chance of winning an election is if he opts for a bold political move in the form of an agreement with the Palestinians. That way, the reasoning goes, he will be able to go into an election with a strong campaign message. Failing that, the prevailing view is that he will sink.