Word: olmert
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...United Nations to be more than $1.5 billion - but the channeling of reconstruction aid into the territory is a contentious political issue. Israel and some international donors are reluctant to send funds through Hamas, which governs Gaza, for fear of "legitimizing" the Islamists, as Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says. One Hamas spokesman told TIME that the group's primary concern was rebuilding Gaza from the rubble. "We want to rebuild houses, not our military capacity," he said. But other Hamas commanders said they would continue bringing weapons into Gaza to enable their "resistance" against Israel...
...Another influential newspaper, the leftist Haaretz, even urged Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to set up an independent inquiry into accusations of war crimes by the Israeli military in Gaza. "Has the IDF (the Israeli Defense Forces) crossed the line according to international law?" the paper wrote. "Was there no other way aside from such widespread killing and destruction?" The editorial argued that Israel needed its own inquiry because "We cannot wait until the world has its say, and perhaps takes legal steps...
...continuation of politics by other means" may have been coined by Carl von Clausewitz in 19th century Prussia, but it was given new meaning during Israel's 22-day offensive in Gaza. The troika of Israeli decision-makers that ran the military campaign - Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Ehud Barak (leader of the Labor Party) and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni (who replaced Olmert as leader of the Kadima party because of his impending corruption case) - are fierce political rivals. "If they were together on an island in a Survivor episode," says Reuven Hazan, a political scientist at the Hebrew...
...Olmert wanted to prolong the Gaza war to do more damage to Hamas, in the hope of repairing his legacy that had been badly tarnished during Israel's botched 2006 war in Lebanon and by police allegations of corruption. Livni and Barak, both of whom are running for Olmert's job, wanted to end it earlier. But the two candidates differed on how to end it: Barak, a former general himself and ex-premier, argued that a cease-fire concluded with Hamas would be more durable. But Livni argued for a unilateral pullout from Gaza, having dealt the territory...
...regardless of the outcome of the Olmert-Livni-Barak tussle within the war cabinet, the biggest winner from the Gaza campaign was Benyamin Netanyahu, leader of the hawkish opposition Likud party and front-runner in the polls, who watched the Gaza war from the sidelines and saw his own lead over Livni wider to a margin of 33 seats to her party...