Victorious Olmert must excite Israelis

To gain support for his plans to redraw borders, the vote leader needs to win hearts and minds

BY GERSHOM GORENBERG
March 31, 2006

Israelis, it's said, tell the truth to pollsters but lie in the voting booth. Ehud Olmert, unlikely heir to Israeli power, therefore won a smaller victory in Tuesday's elections than the pollsters predicted.

Yet win he did. And, if Olmert can overcome some serious challenges, that victory will literally change the country's shape.

Three years ago, Olmert barely made it into the Knesset on the right-wing Likud ticket. Unpopular within that party, he was nevertheless a close ally of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Soon he became the most influential advocate within Sharon's circle for the stunning decision to withdraw unilaterally from the Gaza Strip. Afterward, he encouraged Sharon to bolt the Likud and create the new, centrist Kadima Party.

Olmert's change of direction was as dramatic as a religious conversion, or as that of the old American leftists who morphed into neocons - although in his case the move was leftward. He had been a blueblood of the right, son of an ultranationalist politician, lifetime advocate of the "Whole Land of Israel" - of keeping all the land Israel conquered in the 1967 Six-Day War. He had supported settlement in occupied territory and spoken before the fevered demonstrations of the right against the Oslo accords.

And then, in 2003, Olmert accepted what critics of settlement had argued all the way back to 1967 - that Arabs would eventually outnumber Jews in the combined territory of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. Keeping the occupied land risked turning Israel into a binational state. The only way to remain a Jewish state and a democracy was to pull back.

Sharon's stroke in January thrust Olmert into his place as leader of the new party. Defying pundits' expectations, Kadima did not collapse. Unlike Sharon, though, Olmert could not keep his positions vague and count on charisma to give him victory. Instead, Olmert ran on the clear commitment to leave much of the West Bank and to dismantle settlements. His erstwhile colleagues on the right correctly labeled the election a referendum on withdrawal.

Olmert did not light the campaign on fire. Many people who told pollsters they'd vote for him apparently did not vote at all. He won considerably fewer seats in the Knesset than Sharon was once expected to get.

Nonetheless, his party and others that support giving up land won an unambiguous majority. What's more, the other parties in that group are even more committed to ceding land. Chief among them is Labor, which Olmert will need for any stable ruling coalition. Although few people realize it, Labor initiated settlement in occupied land when it ruled Israel after the Six-Day War. But the party's current leaders reject that legacy and seek a negotiated accord with the Palestinians that would include giving up nearly all the West Bank.

As a referendum, therefore, the election gave Olmert a mandate to redraw Israel's boundaries to give it a Jewish majority and end its rule over the Palestinians. For the first time since 1967, the voters defined settlement as a problem to be solved, rather than a national goal.

That said, Olmert must meet three challenges. The first is to turn the tepid support he won in the election into wider, more enthusiastic backing. He can't stop campaigning, explaining, advocating. Even the partial pullback he seeks would mean evacuating tens of thousands of settlers. That's a wrenching step, best accomplished with the widest possible consensus.

Most Israelis would prefer to cede land in an agreement with Palestinian moderates. That way, Israel would receive the quid pro quo of peace. So far, though, Olmert has spoken mainly of a unilateral pullback. Setting its own lines, he feels, Israel would be able to give back less. Still true to his right-wing roots, he prefers faits accompli to negotiating. The Hamas victory in recent Palestinian elections allows him to argue there is no Palestinian partner - but that was his attitude even before the Palestinian vote.

Olmert's second challenge, therefore, is to take another large step toward realism and recognize that Israel must reach agreement with Palestinians. Moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is still available as a negotiating partner, and an agreement with him would weaken the Hamas hardliners. To succeed, Olmert must learn the nuanced art of negotiating.

That's true internally as well. West Bank settlers, especially the hardline believers in the Whole Land, know they have lost the country's support. The young, especially, are angry and alienated. Olmert needs to learn to negotiate with them as well, to persuade them that moving is the best way to serve the country and their ideals. The alternative is brutal confrontation.

No one knows if Olmert can grow into this job. The election totals say only that he has been given the chance.

Gershom Gorenberg is the author of "The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977."