Word: olmert
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Elected Prime Minister in March in the wake of his predecessor Ariel Sharon's debilitating stroke, Olmert, 60, did not expect to define himself in this way--through the most dramatic outbreak of cross-border Arab-Israeli violence since the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Voters brought him to power not as the man best equipped to fight Israel's enemies but as one explicitly committed to disengaging from Israel's foes, to walling them off by establishing borders demarcated by an imposing fence. Hizballah's incursion into Israel two weeks ago, in which eight soldiers were killed in addition...
Throughout the crisis, Olmert has displayed a characteristic decisiveness. "In his meetings, everyone has a limited time to talk," says a senior aide to an Israeli government minister. "Then he makes decisions quickly. He's a fast thinker and not hesitant--for better and worse." When Hizballah took the soldiers hostage, Olmert faced a challenge. He could have opted for a limited response: in 2000, after all, five months after Israel pulled its troops out of southern Lebanon following an 18-year occupation, Hizballah kidnapped three Israeli soldiers, and Israel declined to retaliate, choosing calm over escalation and, eventually, opting...
...rockets and missiles. Of late, Hizballah's charismatic leader, Hasan Nasrallah, had explicitly threatened to kidnap Israeli soldiers, and Jerusalem believes it thwarted at least two attempts by his fighters to do just that. Army brass had urged the political leadership to respond with precisely the kind of campaign Olmert has initiated, and Israeli forces practiced just such an operation in a tabletop exercise as recently as two months ago. After the soldiers' kidnapping, Olmert, according to one of his ministers, presented his Cabinet with the military's plans and after a discussion said he was approving the action...
That Israel no longer occupied any part of Lebanon gave Olmert's government credibility with much of the world as it responded to Hizballah's incursion, at least in the beginning. Israel's withdrawal of the last of its settlers and soldiers from the Gaza Strip a year ago added to the store of global goodwill that Israel started out with. Plus Olmert calculated that he could count on the support, if not the applause, of President Bush, who since 9/11 has strongly backed Israel. Some Arab countries--Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan--even took the unusual step of criticizing Hizballah...
...Olmert's actions have followed a certain logic of Israeli politics. A weak response to the kidnappings could have given his political opponents a handy cudgel with which to pound him. Olmert was particularly vulnerable because of his lack of security credentials--in a country that often entrusts high political office to its war heroes. During his compulsory military service, Private Olmert found glory as a mere reporter for the army's radio and journal. (At age 35, seven years into his career as a member of the Knesset, he enrolled in an officer-training course, emerging as a second...