Israeli PM risks losing office as coalition partner begins leader poll

Ehud Olmert's problems look set to multiply as the Israeli Labour Party seek a new leader.

The two leading contenders to take the party's helm from Peretz have said that they will work to get rid of Mr Olmert, who has been under intense pressure following a damning report into his prosecution of last year's war in Lebanon. Labour is part of the ruling coalition along with Mr Olmert's Kadima party.

Peretz, who is also tainted by the debacle of the war in Lebanon, has said he will stand down as Defence Minister after the primaries, which will leave Olmert spectacularly exposed. Olmert's managing to cling to office for this long is already astonishing, but if a new Labour leader makes it is aim to unseat the Prime Minister it is very hard to imagine how Olmert could possibly survive, especially as his poll numbers say his job approval amongst Israelis currently stands between 2-3%. Allowing for errors in the polling numbers that could put him as low as 0%.

Opinion polls suggest that Ami Ayalon, a former head of the Shin Bet internal security service, will win but may not get the required 40% of the vote to avoid a second round of voting. Ehud Barak, a former prime minister, is second with Mr Peretz a distant third.

If there is no clear winner, a second count of the Labour Party's 104,000 members will take place on June 13. An opinion poll published in the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth said Mr Ayalon would win a second round with 49% to Mr Barak's 39%.

If Labour leaves the coalition Olmert will be left running a minority government with 59 out of 120 seats in the Knesset. He would then have to try and make a deal with United Torah Judaism, the party of the Ashkenazi ultra-orthodox, or even the Likud party. Either way, Olmert would have to sacrifice political principle to remain in office. Luckily for Olmert, political principle is something he long ago stopped pretending to have, the best example of this being his decision to invite the fascist Avigdor Lieberman to join his cabinet as Deputy Prime Minister.

It is moves like this that have managed to keep Olmert in power but one can't help thinking that he is now running out of places to hide.

Whatever the result of the primary, it will lead to an extended bout of horse-trading as Mr Olmert will try to offer a high enough price to the new leader to encourage him to stay in the government and continue supporting him.

Shmuel Sandlar, a political scientist at Bar Ilan University in Ramat Gan, said that whatever the result, Mr Olmert did not have much to look forward to.

"The worst case for Olmert is an Ayalon victory. He must ask Olmert to resign and the Kadima party may be more interested in the survival of the party than the survival of the prime minister," he said.

And all of this is because Olmert chose to go to war rather than to agree to a prisoner exchange, an exchange that he will still have to make if he wants to have his soldiers returned.

He tried to prove that he was as militarily competent as Ariel Sharon and only succeeded in making himself look clueless and Israel looking weak. I do honestly find it astonishing that almost a year after the Israeli-Lebanon war that this man is still in office at all.

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Tags: Israel, Olmert, Israel-Lebanon war, Kadima Party, Ayalon, Peretz, Barak