Ruth KING

In the late 1980s, Ehud Olmert, then the youngest member of the Knesset, addressed an AFSI national conference. Although the audience was clearly disappointed that the featured speaker, Ariel Sharon, had canceled, Olmert made an inspiring speech. His objections to concessions and withdrawals and outside pressures and his repeated assurances that there would never be another sovereignty between the Jordan River and the 1967 lines heartened the audience which feared that the “old line” had no successors.

Olmert’s post Oslo statements and his administration as mayor of Jerusalem were equally gratifying. In 1994 he caused a diplomatic incident when a scheduled visit by President Bill Clinton was canceled as a result of Olmert’s insistence that the tour include the Old City. Despite opposition by local Arabs, he completed a tunnel alongside the Temple Mount which sparked the first post Oslo shooting between Israel and Palestinian Arab soldiers including gun battles in Judea, Samaria and Gaza which killed 54 Palestinians and 14 Israeli soldiers. Unfortunately, at then Prime Minister Netanyahu’s instructions, the tunnel was opened under cover of night, giving the appearance of something illicit. Olmert vigorously defended the tunnel and reacted forcefully against PLO violence.
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n 2002 Olmert was a featured guest at a breakfast of the Christian Coalition's "Road to Victory 2002" convention, attended by prominent ministers, legislators, journalists, and broadcasters. He greeted the participants, saying "God is with us in supporting the State of Israel. You, the great Christians of America, are with us and we will stand firm together against the terrorists. It is hard for us in Israel to live with the sights of terror, to go to sleep with them, to wake up in the morning, to know what you have seen, but don't get it wrong. This is pain, not weakness."
 
On June 3rd, 2002 he wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal “Israel Can't Do Business With Terrorists.” It was a tough article against appeasing terrorism or bowing to US pressure. He even went so far as to suggest targeted assassinations of terrorists.

As David Bedein notes in “The Metamorphosis of Ehud Olmert” (Arutz Sheva January 13, 2006) “The change in Olmert began to surface shortly before he left his position of mayor of Jerusalem in late 2002, when he was running again for the Knesset. At the time, it was discovered that the Palestinian Authority schoolbooks -- containing a curriculum that inculcates Palestinian schoolchildren with the conviction that Israel has no right to exist -- had been incorporated into the Jerusalem municipal school system.” When Bedein asked Olmert about this, his response was a terse: "They can teach what they want, and we will teach what we want."

Olmert’s metamorphosis was swift. By 2005 he was happily negotiating with Dahlan, Abbas, and just about any terrorist he could find. In a speech touting disengagement from Gaza delivered in New York in June 2005 to the American Israel Policy Forum, Olmert gushed: “It will bring more security, greater safety, much more prosperity, and a lot of joy for all the people that live in the Middle East.” Now joy is not something that even simple Shimon predicted. Olmert went on: "We are tired of fighting, we are tired of being courageous, we are tired of winning, we are tired of defeating our enemies." 

Well that sort of explains it. He is suffering from chronic political fatigue syndrome. Israel’s Old Man River…he’s just plain tired of fighting, a little surprising since he never served in combat. Can you imagine Olmert negotiating? “Listen I’m tired of winning. I’ll give you everything you ask for. Take it or leave it.”

Sharon promoted disengagement as a “realistic” alternative to the failed Oslo process, given that there was no possibility of peace partners. But Olmert is still caught up in Oslo-in-Wonderland. Said Olmert in that remarkable speech: “We want them [the Palestinians] to be our friends, our partners, our good neighbors.” Friendship, he said, “is within reach if we will be smart, if we will dare, if we will be prepared to take the risks….And we will spare no effort in order to convince them, not by fighting with them...but by sitting with them, and talking with them, and helping them and cooperating with them and partnering with them...so that the Middle East will indeed become what it was destined to be from the outset, a paradise for all the world.”

Now there’s a mouthful. Olmert wants to be friends with the neighbors….all the neighbors, except of course for the Jewish settlers of Gaza, Judea and Samaria, Israel’s finest citizens with whom he is spoiling for a fight.

Olmert declared leaving Gaza would inaugurate “a new morning of great hope in our part of the world.” Did the ensuing actual chaos in Gaza or the rockets fired into Israeli cities, or the buildup of arsenals and terrorist training camps dim his enthusiasm? No way.

Someone who believes the “peace process” is in full flower, at most in need of some extra effort, a little bit of “daring” by Israel, belongs in a psych ward. Instead it looks as if the floridly delusional Olmert will be propelled by a self-deceiving public into the Prime Minister’s office.