Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has given three speeches in recent months. The first was delivered on the night of his victory, the second when his government was sworn in, and the most recent at David Ben-Gurion’s grave on the anniversary of his death on Monday, Nov. 27.
All three are good speeches, committed to peace, public courage and willingness to extend a hand in agreement, and recognizing the need to pay a price.
It would appear that the former Likud member who defied Menahem Begin on the right, who voted against the Camp David Accords in 1978, who believed for years in a greater Israel, has understood the demographic problem and undergone a metamorphosis.
As Ariel Sharon’s deputy, Olmert was one of the leaders, if not the main engineer, of the unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. And now, as prime minister, he appears to be leading the left’s traditional policy of two states, founding a Palestinian state on most of the West Bank, and doing what many Kadima supporters expected from a man of the right: dividing the country.
This didn’t happen after the first two speeches. Very different things did. Mahmoud Abbas was characterized as an irrelevant leader. The policies in the territories — roadblocks, checkpoints, Palestinians working in Israel, freedom of movement inside the territories — were all made harsher than before.
Instead of making a valiant effort, as he promised, to start intensive negotiations with Abbas and his people ahead of establishing a permanent border between two peoples, Olmert wasted his time in negotiations over the meeting with the Palestinian leader itself. He claimed, and then took it back, that the head of the Palestinian Authority was not open to talks, etc., etc. The disappointment in Olmert spread, and the general feeling was that he was not “supplying the goods,” not diplomatically, not socially and not on security.
The kidnapping of soldiers in the South and the North pushed him into a decision on an extensive [military] option in the South and a war in the North, but he had an exit policy. In neither case did he have the support of the public, who wanted to believe that the problem of the abductees could be solved Entebbe-style, 30 years afterwards.
But Entebbe wasn’t reenacted, the price was heavy, and after some 20 days of adulation the belief in him and his colleagues began to fade, until it reached levels lower than any prime minister had known. The world sees him as a weak leader, the Arab world sees him as a weak leader, his colleagues hold him in contempt, and the Israeli public has lost faith in him. This, without the cloud of corruption, investigated for months, that follows him wherever he goes.
There is no doubt that political survival is a central concern for Olmert. It seems that it is his first priority. Moving to the right did him no good. The hints that Israel would know what to do on Iran might have excited his listeners, but didn’t make Israelis feel any better. Neither the promise that as long as he is prime minister he won’t agree to give up the Golan Heights, nor his unnecessary decision to bring Avigdor Lieberman’s Israel Beitenu into the coalition, strengthened Kadima’s public image or his own position.
The resounding Democratic victory in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate weakened him further, and every day he reads the leaks from the Baker-Hamilton report that hint of direct talks that could open soon between the United States, Syria and Iran. He understood that President Bush will demand that he address the Palestinian issue just as he understands that the demands of the nascent Palestinian government will be much more moderate than the demands placed on P.A. Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh’s government a few months ago.
With all this in the background, Olmert stood on Ben-Gurion’s grave to make his third speech. If only he’s serious this time. If only he would move, as I recently suggested, towards a final agreement that follows the Geneva Accords, or find another way to reach an historic deal, Meretz-Yahad will raise their hands in favor, even from our modest place in the opposition.
Yossi Beilin is a member of Israel’s Knesset and chairman of the Meretz-Yachad party.