Word: olmert
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Jerusalem Olmert Bows Out In a surprise announcement, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he would not seek re-election and would step down after his party's Sept. 17 leadership vote. Olmert, currently under two separate criminal investigations over allegations of corruption, had already vowed to resign if charged. The news clears the way for a new government but will probably delay progress on Israeli-Palestinian relations...
...Olmert isn't giving up on talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas just yet. The Israeli Prime Minister said that while the fate of Jerusalem would remain unresolved, the remainder of a peace agreement that would give the Palestinians control over much of the land occupied by Israel in 1967 was still probable. The proposed deal, of course, is a "shelf agreement," an exercise in marking out the parameters of a future peace process that would be implemented only when Israel's security demands are met. The assumption, in the talks, is that the current Palestinian leadership would be unable...
...Still, Olmert's backtracking on Jerusalem - a deal breaker for the Palestinians - is a significant splash of cold water on the enthusiasm that the Israeli Prime Minister himself expressed two weeks ago in Paris, when he told French President Nicolas Sarkozy that Palestinians and Israelis have never been closer to a peace agreement. Until now, Olmert had been playing along with a rosy Bush Administration-scenario that predicted a peace agreement (if destined for the shelf, rather than implementation) by the end of 2008. Palestinian negotiators are now saying that without an agenda that includes Jerusalem, which Palestinians want...
...political needs of the leaders involved. The Bush Administration is desperate for foreign policy success in a region littered with its failures. President Abbas needs to show that he can deliver through negotiation what his more-popular rivals in Hamas are unable to achieve through violence. As for Olmert, addressing Israelis' long-standing desire to resolve the conflict with their neighbors has helped him stay afloat politically even as his popularity has plunged following his disastrous management of the 2006 war in Lebanon...
...engage Iran and hinting at a horizon for a troop withdrawal in Iraq. Hamas, already masters of the Gaza Strip, bragged recently that they could take on Fatah in the West Bank too, if not for President Abbas's movement enjoying the de facto protection of the Israelis. And Olmert's rivals also smell blood. Tzipi Livni, his Foreign Minister and rival within the Kadima Party, called once again on Tuesday for the Prime Minister to resign, and Defense Secretary Ehud Barak, leader of the Labor Party, may join the pressure for Olmert to take the honorable way out. Regardless...