Ehud Olmert resignation throws Israel's politics into turmoil
It's strange that Ehud Olmert came into power to complete the work that Ariel Sharon started in the Gaza Strip. Olmert was to remove the settlers from the West Bank in the exact same way as had been done in Gaza. He had campaigned on it. It was the entire reason the Kadima party existed.
Yesterday, battered by allegations of corruption, Ehud Olmert announced that he was resigning.
It's just as well really, he's accomplished nothing. His ill fated decision to invade Lebanon - urged on, nay... goaded, by Bush and Cheney - led to Israel's first ever defeat in war and personal approval rating of around 3%. And, at that point, the very reasons his party existed had to be shelved, rendering his premiership utterly pointless.
He's had an albatross around his neck ever since and the greatest surprise in all of this is that, in a political system as turbulent as Israel's, that he's managed to hold on as long as he has done.
Now, finally, it's over.
"I will step aside properly in an honourable and responsible way, and afterwards I will prove my innocence," Olmert told reporters from a podium outside his Jerusalem office. "I want to make it clear - I am proud to be a citizen of a country where the prime minister can be investigated like a regular citizen. It is the duty of the police to investigate, and the duty of the prosecution to instruct the police. The prime minister is not above the law."Normally, when an Israeli leader steps down, one has to consider the implications for the peace process, but in this case there is nothing to consider. The present peace process, George Bush's famed road map for peace, is worse than a sick joke. An Israeli leader with a 3% approval rating was negotiating with Abbas, the man the Palestinians didn't elect.
And even then their negotiations appeared to be going nowhere.
Israeli political analyst Dan Margalit, an old friend of Olmert, called the prime minister's decision to step down "a sad end to a miserable career". Uri Dromi, another pundit, called Olmert a "lame duck".It's been a long time coming, and the only surprise - now that he's made this announcement - is that he got away with postponing it for so long.The Israeli public reacted with mounting anger and contempt to the news of Olmert's legal problems. Nahum Barnea, a columnist with the Yediot Aharonot newspaper, wrote on the eve of the recent EU-Mediterranean summit in France that the prime minister was finished, but was in denial: "Politicians in Israel, the leaders he will meet in Paris, prosecutors and the police all know it. The only one who refuses to acknowledge it is Olmert."
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