Word: olmert
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Most Israelis didn't need an official commission of inquiry to tell them that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made a major hash out of last summer's war in Lebanon. When Hizballah kidnapped three Israeli solders last July, Olmert launched a massive military campaign whose stated goal was beyond reach: to end Hizballah's existence as a military threat. Instead, Israeli ground troops found themselves bogged down in deadly urban combat with Hizballah guerilla whose tenacity and tactics the Israelis were unprepared for. That, together with the barrage of rockets into northern Israel that continued until the cease-fire went...
...There was no surprise, then, in the damning preliminary report released Monday by the Winograd Commission, appointed by Olmert to investigate the conduct of the war amid the barrage of criticism that followed its termination - indeed, parts of it had been leaking into the media for days. Still, even Israel's jaded commentariat found the tone of the report surprisingly harsh. Some derivation of the word "failure" appears several times on almost every page of the release...
...report's unforgiving judgment of his stewardship of the nation's security might have prompted a politician more sensitive to pubic opinion than Olmert is to resign. But not only has Olmert already announced his intention to remain in office, but such is the malaise of Israeli politics today that he is in little danger of being kicked out anytime soon: Israel's opposition is deeply divided between left and right, since Olmert's moderate Kadima party has absorbed most of the country's centrists. And the Israeli public has grown so fed up with the corruption rampant...
...Olmert's key rivals, Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, are both former prime ministers whose track record in office failed to persuade voters to reelect them. Both men have so far refrained from moving in for the kill, lest they seem overzealous of taking advantage of what was a national calamity. Or perhaps they sense that Olmert has been mortally wounded, and will be unable to survive the Winograd judgment regardless of his own intentions. Not only have his approval ratings crashed to around 2 percent, but he is also under official investigation over allegations of financial misdoings - although these...
...Another nightmare awaits Olmert. The State Comptroller's office says it may launch a criminal investigation into his past financial dealings. All in all, it's a bad time for Olmert to start a major offensive against Gaza, and nobody knows this better than the Palestinian militants who are firing the rockets. With reporting by Jamil Hamad/Bethlehem and Aaron J. Klein/Jerusalem