Olmert the 'Leftist'

A week or so ago, just before Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year, Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, who's on the verge of ending his time as PM, said some things that caught everyone's attention. Essentially he said that Israel would have to negotiate a deal with the Palestinians and withdraw from all or nearly all of the territories. For a recent, leftist, opinion on Olmerts words, see this article in the International Herald Tribune (not my favourite paper): http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/10/06/opinion/edromi.php

I give this source rather than another simply because this is what I read just now.

I agree with Olmert's basic insight, which is that for years most of the Israeli right has been trying to have it both ways, or ignoring reality, which are two ways of saying the same thing. The problem of the right is that they want the land (of the territories) without the people (the Palestinians). Incidentally, the problem of the Israeli left is that they want to negotiate a withdrawal when there no one to talk to and when the Palestinian polity is even pursuing a political strategy which depends on there not being a withdrawal (which, I suppose, are two ways of saying the same thing). By basic reading of this question is that withdrawal is what Israel most needs and what the Palestinian polity most fears. It's also the first step on the long and painful road which the Palestians must eventaully travel to some form of responsible self-governance (I use these words to allow more flexibility than "democracy" but democracy is essentally what I have in mind: the people governing themselves in their own interest). The fact that an Israeli withdrawal is the first step towards Palestinian self-governance is part of why it poses such a threat to the current Palestinian polity, whose hold on power depends on a continued Israeli presence [I know this is a lot to say in once sentence; I'll eventually have the chance to expand on this].

But back to Olmert. I think that Olmert, as a former protege of Arik Sharon and as the husband of an avowed leftist, understands the situation more or less as I do, which is why I've never hated him, even when his approval ratings are down around 6%. Olmert has crippling problems though. First, his tenure started with the Second Lebanon War, which, despite being only a moderate failure, has been perceived as a complete disaster in Israel. Olmert never recovered politically from that. I only hope that his party, Kadima, still can. This political weakness has prevented him from even dreaming of carrying out any kind of unilateral action in the west bank like what Sharon did in Gaza, despite the fact that Olmert was electing on promises of doing exactly that (it was called the 'convergence plan' to refer to the idea of bringing ideals and reality into convergence).

Too weak politically to act unilaterally, Olmert decided to try for some kind of Israeli withdrawal through negotiations. This made him, in this respect, a classical Israeli leftist. And now that his tenure is just about up, he's finally felt free to say it outright.

Of course the right detests Olmert for it and calls him a traitor, while the left scoffs at him for only saying all this now, when it no longer matters. Frankly it's all a big sad story of infighting and non-accomplishment for Israel which has only dragged Israel down even further into the slump of morale it's been suffering since the 2006 Lebanon war.