Can the 'Prince' Lead Israel?

By David Ignatius
Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Ehud Olmert has a reputation in Israeli politics as a "prince," the privileged son of a prominent family who lacks the depth and military experience of Israel's founding generation. That makes many Israelis nervous. But in framing the issues that led to Israel's withdrawal from Gaza last year, the deputy prime minister showed a level of strategic vision and political guts that outdid his boss, Ariel Sharon.

Olmert's leadership qualities are a critical variable in the political transition that's underway in Israel after Prime Minister Sharon's massive stroke. As Sharon's deputy, Olmert is positioned to inherit control of his new centrist party, Kadima, and to become Israel's next prime minister -- if he can convince the country that he isn't a political lightweight and is tough enough to protect Israel's security.

Olmert played a trailblazing role three years ago in proposing a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and the West Bank. At the time, Israelis were reeling from a failed peace process, a wave of suicide bombings and a growing sense of despair about the country's political future. Olmert argued in a November 2003 interview with the newspaper Haaretz that to survive and prosper as a Jewish state, Israel must pull back from its settlements in Gaza and most of the West Bank. If Israel tried to hold on to the territories it occupied in the 1967 war, Jews would soon be outnumbered by Palestinians and Israel would lose its soul.

Olmert didn't mince words in his 2003 interview: "There is no doubt in my mind that very soon the government of Israel is going to have to address the demographic issue with the utmost seriousness and resolve," he said. "In the absence of a negotiated agreement -- and I do not believe in the realistic prospect of an agreement -- we need to implement a unilateral alternative."

That became the strategic logic for Sharon's policy of disengagement, but the prime minister never stated it as boldly or clearly as his deputy. Olmert stressed that to make disengagement work, Israel would have to pull back far enough to maintain an 80-20 ratio of Jews to Arabs within its borders, and that it would have to pull out of some Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. These were issues that Sharon fudged, to the day he was rushed to the hospital.

Shaken by the prospect of losing the patriarchal Sharon, many Israeli commentators have been taking potshots at his deputy. "Sharon was a demigod in Kadima. No one would have dared to question his decisions. Olmert is not a demigod. He is not even a deputy demigod," Yossi Verter wrote in Haaretz last weekend. He explained in another commentary that in focus groups organized by Kadima, "Olmert was defined as 'admired,' but not as 'liked.' " What's anguishing for Israelis is a sense that as Sharon leaves the political stage, the heroic age of leaders is passing. No politician will have Sharon's credentials as a risk-taking military commander. That has its positive elements, as well as its negative ones. Sharon liked to tell friends that the most difficult task he faced as a soldier was making the step up from a corporal, who can break rules and take risks, to a sergeant, who must maintain order and stability.

Sharon himself never fully made that transition. He remained the risk-taking corporal -- the soldier who defied orders to seize the initiative and who usually got away with it. It was that raw, bad-boy charisma that was the source of Sharon's appeal. Olmert has the opposite challenge -- he needs to be more the corporal and less the sergeant, more the risk-taker and less the princely administrator.

What would Olmert do if he succeeded Sharon as prime minister? Israeli sources say he would continue along the course he charted in 2003. He would officially embrace the Bush administration's "road map" for peace, as Sharon did, but with the expectation that it will prove a dead end because of growing anarchy in the Palestinian territories. Meanwhile, he would complete Israel's security fence to provide an eastern border for the country along the West Bank.

To show that he can be tough with the Palestinians, Olmert would ally with former Shin Bet chief Avi Dichter and other security hawks. And, perhaps most important, he would begin quiet talks with the Bush administration about a new process of unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank that would be coordinated with whatever Palestinian government exists. "The strategy is consolidation," Olmert said in 2003, and that would still be his watchword.

Israeli politics is a rough game, and Olmert has yet to prove that he has the right stuff. The coming weeks will test his qualities of leadership -- and also the Israeli public's model of what a leader is.