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Olmert Sees Writing on the Wall – a Little Late

Why is it that Israel’s leaders come to their senses and confront historical realities of their conflict with the Palestinians only when they are out of office or about to leave office? Look at Ehud Olmert, the leader of the Kadima Party and successor of Ariel Sharon who is about to step down as the prime minister.

Olmert ruled Israel for almost three years and was the most powerful leader of his country. As the Prime Minister, Olmert held countless meetings and endless negotiations with the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and other Arab leaders as part of the so-called peace process. All that brainstorming – or whatever they did in those meetings – came to naught and has borne no results whatsoever.

And now when Olmert is about to bow out following the corruption scandal in favour of Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, he has woken up to the fact that Israel might after all have to accept some ‘reasonable’ demands of the Palestinians like turning the West Bank back to the Palestinians and sharing the holy city of Jerusalem with the Palestinians as the capital of future state of Palestine.

The Israeli leader also argues that the Jewish state will have to give up the strategic Golan Heights that belong to Syria as part of a settlement with the Arab country. Most interestingly, Olmert dismisses as ‘megalomania’ the idea of destroying Iran’s nuclear programme without the US blessings.

The Olmert remarks came in an unusually candid interview with the newspaper Yediot Ahronoth. And let’s say this: The views and words of Israeli leaders are unprecedented and unlike anything any Israeli leader has ever dared to say in public. And Olmert deserves kudos for this rare courage to say it as it is to his people who have been encouraged to live in a make-believe world of their own by successive Israeli leaders.

The question is why Olmert did not share these noble views and thoughts with his people all these years? More pertinently, why if he so clearly believed that Israel needed to be more reasonable in its dealings with the people whose land and whose homes it has stolen did not take any steps to correct these historical injustices when he could have?

Honestly speaking, Olmert was no different from his predecessors in his so-called engagement with the Palestinians. He talked the talk of a ‘viable Palestinian state’ just like the rest of them but did not surrender a single inch of the Palestinian land to realise this very noble vision.

Let alone restoring the Palestinian land to its rightful owners, the Israeli regime imprisoned the whole Palestinian population in their homes. The Gaza blockade, economic sanctions, the mind-numbing jungle of check posts and the Wall of course have turned the Palestinian territories into a living hell for their residents. All this did not happen under Olmert alone, of course. But he could have certainly changed it. Which is why it’s so ironic that the outgoing PM should talk of making ‘sacrifices for peace’. Can we expect Olmert’s successor, Tzipi Livni, to learn from him? We’ll wait and see.