Word: olmert
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...current struggle could well determine how kindly history treats Olmert. He has taken Israel into an unplanned war, and there is always the risk his venture could fail. "For Olmert to sustain the trust the Israeli public has in him, he is going to have to produce," says Aaron David Miller, a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington who has advised six U.S. Secretaries of State. "It reminds me of the guy jumping out of a 15th-floor window, and at the 8th floor someone asks, 'How are you doing?,' and the guy says, 'So far, so good...
...Olmert's fall is certainly steeper than he anticipated when he took the dive. The Israelis calculated that their campaign, which has included strikes on not just Hizballah targets but also Lebanese roads, bridges and runways as well as a naval blockade--plus the explicit threat of worse to come--would cow Hizballah. In addition to maintaining a militia, the group functions as a political party and has a representative in the Lebanese Cabinet. Hizballah represents the traditionally downtrodden Shi'ites of Lebanon, who live mostly in the south and the Dahiya suburb of Beirut, areas Israel has hit hard...
...George Bush about the wisdom of calling for Osama bin Laden's head.) "If Nasrallah is alive at the end of this and gives one of his speeches, it cannot look like an Israeli victory," says Eti Livni, a former Knesset member and close friend of Olmert...
...idea is to weaken Hizballah as much as possible before a cease-fire takes hold and, more urgently, to stop Hizballah's rocketing of Israeli towns, which by the end of last week had taken 15 lives, on top of the 19 soldiers who have died in the conflict. Olmert knows that the longer Israel's north is crippled by rocket fire, the more the public is likely to question whether his onslaught was well calculated...
Such questioning could, in turn, prompt Olmert to conclude he needs to sustain the fight until he can end it in a way that clearly rewards his gamble. "Israel must emerge from this war as a winner, or else the war will continue," says Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres. That's an equation that could make for a conflict even longer and nastier than the one that has already surpassed either party's bellicose ambitions...