Israel's Unlikely Transformer

As a fiery young Knesset member in the 1970s, Olmert had defied the venerable Menachem Begin over the 1978 Camp David accords between Israel and Egypt, which called for full withdrawal from the Sinai and offered a blueprint for Palestinian autonomy. And in 2000, he was furious over then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak's concessions in Jerusalem's Old City and on the Temple Mount as part of the "Camp David II" diplomatic effort. However, Olmert did not complain when Barak agreed to yield several Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. He did not argue that the move violated the principle of what many Israelis consider "indivisible" Jerusalem -- though such a reaction would have been in keeping with his earlier politics.

Olmert's family also factored into his evolution. His wife, Aliza, an artist, has frequently argued with her husband over politics during their 35 years of marriage, and has even admitted that she often voted against his Likud party. And in a society that views mandatory military service as a patriotic duty, Olmert's son Ariel became a conscientious objector. Another son, Shaul, signed a petition urging soldiers not to serve in the West Bank, and Olmert's daughter Donna volunteers for a group monitoring the treatment of Palestinians passing through West Bank checkpoints.

Olmert spoke openly of his family's influence in this recent campaign, telling the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronoth: "They support me now, I guess they will vote for me, but they hold me very tight and say, 'Hey, Dad, you better behave yourself.' So I'm trying."

After nearly three years of the second intifada, 2003 brought some hope. The more moderate Abbas was the Palestinian prime minister, and many looked for him to lead his people away from the dead-end leadership of Arafat. However, within 130 days, Abbas resigned. I was no longer a journalist, but was back home with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. We invited both Olmert and Nabil Amr, a top aide to Abbas, to address our annual conference in Virginia.

It was here that Olmert first suggested that if there were no prospects of peace talks, Israel would have to move unilaterally. Olmert felt time was not on Israel's side, a view at odds with Sharon, who felt time would either harmonize Israeli and Palestinian views or allow Israeli determination to prevail.

Olmert made his views explicit in a bombshell newspaper interview that December. He stated that West Bank occupation could not continue indefinitely. He cited demographic trends that threatened the character of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. He expressed concern that defeat of the two-state solution would give way to international calls for a "one-state" solution -- a euphemism for the destruction of Israel.

The trigger for that interview was a memorial service a few days earlier. Sharon was due to give the annual speech at the grave site of Israel's iconic founder David Ben-Gurion. Sharon canceled because of illness, and asked Olmert to stand in his stead. Speaking in the Negev's Sde Boker kibbutz, Olmert declared that "the greatness of Ben-Gurion was not just his capability to lift a vision of generations to the sky, but also to limit what was possible to the circumstances of time." Olmert went on to quote Ben-Gurion: " 'When it was a question of all the land without a Jewish state or a Jewish state without all the land, we chose a Jewish state without all the land.' "

Olmert would later ask posthumous forgiveness from Menachem Begin for voting against the 1978 Camp David accords. "I voted against Menachem Begin," Olmert said last August on the eve of the Gaza pullout. "I told him it was a historic mistake, how dangerous it would be, and so on and so on. Now I am sorry he is not alive for me to be able to publicly recognize his wisdom and my mistake. He was right and I was wrong. Thank God, we pulled out of Sinai."

When I saw Olmert in 2004 at his office in Jerusalem, I asked what motivated the stirring grave site speech. He said that when Sharon asked him to speak, he asked the prime minister to fax him his planned remarks. Those remarks were about the need to cede parts of biblical Israel. Olmert thus believed that he had Sharon's political imprimatur, but in the eyes of the Israeli public, it was Olmert who pressed Sharon.

With Sharon in a coma, Olmert broke with the conventions of Israeli politics this year by declaring in the middle of an election campaign that if his party won, he would seek to evacuate most of the West Bank settlements. This was Ben-Gurion's formula, updated for the times--a Jewish state without all the land.

The young Olmert would have been ideologically horrified. Olmert the politician would have viewed it as bad strategy; the pledge likely caused Kadima to lose about 10 Knesset seats in last week's election.

But Olmert today is no longer the ideologue or political operator of years past. Yet that very past may grant him the credibility to overcome multiple challenges and make his own journey into a new destiny for Israel as well.

davidm@washingtoninstitute.org

David Makovsky is director of the project on the Middle East peace process at the Washington Institute for Near

East Policy and the former executive editor of the Jerusalem Post.