Word: olmert
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...have revealed the scale of the challenge facing U.S. President Barack Obama in jump-starting Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts. Israeli voters tacked to the right, and the government that results from Tuesday's election will be, if anything, even less inclined than the current government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to conclude a two-state peace agreement with the Palestinian leadership. (Of course, the year of talks about talks between Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas failed to yield any progress.) Meanwhile, the Gaza war cemented the stature of Hamas as the dominant political force among Palestinians...
Fatah leaders see the Israeli election as confirming what they already knew: there's nothing to be gained by continuing the charade of U.S.-sponsored talks about talks with the Israelis. Palestinians could not get what they needed from Olmert, and they know that his successors will take even more of a hard line. From the Palestinian perspective, the past eight years of waiting for negotiations with Israel have left Abbas empty-handed, while the latest Gaza conflict has put Hamas in a stronger position than ever in the court of Palestinian public opinion. Despite the violence by Hamas gunmen...
...Whoever Peres picks to form a new government - and it will probably be Netanyahu - that person will have 42 days to glue together a coalition. Most likely, the bartering will drag on for weeks, with outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert staying on as caretaker, probably until early April. Before the voting, Israelis said they wanted a strong leader. What they have instead is a prolonged period of political disarray...
...combined right-wing bloc led by Netanyahu gaining 64 of the 120 seats in the Knesset, compared with only 56 for center-left bloc led by Livni. Late last year, Livni failed to form a majority coalition when she took over her party from disgraced Prime Minister Ehud Olmert - a failure that triggered Tuesday's election. And she may not fare any better this time despite her party having finished first, according to exit polls...
...Mitchell's wish is not necessarily going to be Israel's command. Outgoing Israeli Premier Ehud Olmert is refusing to open the Gaza borders, despite calls by the international aid community to lift the 19-month long blockade. Olmert wants to link the lifting of the siege of Gaza to the release of an Israeli soldier, Corp. Gilad Shalit, held captive in Gaza for over two and a half years. Hamas counters that it will only release Shalit in a trade for hundreds of Palestinians held inside Israeli jails...