Olmert’s Lament

For Olmert, the Gaza withdrawal was a personal turning point. He was born into a family that was once considered a pillar of the Israeli right. Olmert's father, an electrical engineer, emigrated from China to Israel in 1933. He later became the head of settlements for the Herut party, a Likud forerunner inspired by the revisionist Zionism of Zeev Jabotinsky. Herut's founding identity was wrapped up in the idea of settling what would later be called Greater Israel. When Olmert was a boy, the party's emblem was an image of the two banks of the Jordan River. "For us," Olmert told me one day several years ago, "settlements were the purest expression of the Zionist ethos. What did we do? We settled. We built settlements."

As mayor of Jerusalem in the 1990s, Olmert supported settlement building in the Arab eastern half of the city. Yet as the second intifada intensified, he also began warning that without evacuating farther-flung settlements, Israel as a Jewish state would be swept away by a tide of demography. "When you fight for the impossible," he told me in the summer of 2005, "sometimes you lose everything." Olmert's father died before he could witness the disengagement from Gaza, but Olmert once told me, somewhat melodramatically, that he believed the withdrawal would have involved a "major emotional breakdown" for his father.

The Hebrew word for "disengagement"—hitnatkut—was coined by one of Olmert and Sharon's spin doctors to soften the blow of the pullout. Yet another word used frequently to describe later withdrawals, hitkansut—"convergence" or "realignment"—is more accurate. Sharon pledged that Israel would uproot outposts deep in Gaza and the West Bank. Yet at the same time, Israel would quietly consolidate its hold on the clover-shaped ring of settlements abutting Jerusalem. An Israeli source close to Olmert told me that the strategy was a practical step to placate the settlers. "We felt we needed to give them something in order to keep them disciplined," he explained. The Americans, the source continued, were uneasily onboard.

In 2003, a team of Israelis from the prime minister's office held a series of secret meetings with their counterparts in the U.S. National Security Council in both Washington and Jerusalem, according to the Olmert aide. The talks were designed to discuss formulas for continued building within the existing blocs. The Olmert aide said the group agreed that in return there would be no new settlements built, no expropriation of additional Palestinian land, no construction beyond the "built-up line" and no economic incentives from Israel to the settlers. The exact details were kept secret to avoid antagonizing the settlers or the Palestinians. "We did it quietly, and it worked for eight years," said the Israeli source. He was incensed at Clinton's recent comments. "I wrote protocols for all the meetings," the Olmert aide told me. "I have records." A former Bush administration official involved in the talks confirmed the Israeli account.

Israeli officials have been struck by how coordinated the new line out of Washington has been. Even many ordinarily pro-Israel members of Congress read Netanyahu the riot act when he visited the United States recently. By contrast, during the Olmert years, Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would sometimes play a kind of good cop–bad cop routine, with Rice pushing back against settlement growth and Bush trying to stay above the fray. "We had some arguments about what was perceived by them as continued building in the territories," Olmert told me of his dealings with Rice. Olmert said that Bush would ask, "Tell me, does she irritate you?"

At the end of Olmert's term he tried one last maneuver in an effort to secure a legacy. Olmert told me he met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in September 2008 and unfurled a map of Israel and the Palestinian territories. He says he offered Abbas 93.5 to 93.7 percent of the Palestinian territories, along with a land swap of 5.8 percent and a safe-passage corridor from Gaza to the West Bank that he says would make up the rest. The Holy Basin of Jerusalem would be under no sovereignty at all and administered by a consortium of Saudis, Jordanians, Israelis, Palestinians and Americans. Regarding refugees, Olmert says he rejected the right of return and instead offered, as a "humanitarian gesture," a small number of returnees, although "smaller than the Palestinians wanted—a very, very limited number."

Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, confirmed that Olmert had made the offer. "It's very sad," Erekat said. "He was serious, I have to say." Erekat said that he and Abbas studied the materials and began to formulate a response, coordinating with the Americans. But time eventually ran out. A few months after Olmert presented his offer, war erupted in Gaza. Shortly after that, Olmert was out of power.

Erekat insists that Israel's continued settlement building is ultimately what "poisoned the atmosphere" at the talks. He told me that 60 percent of his conversations with his Israeli counterparts during the Annapolis process were devoted to arguments over the settlements. In the end, the Palestinian negotiator said, Olmert "was not committed to stopping settlement activity. I'm not going to say he was lying. But he was playing games with us." The complaint comes off as a little disingenuous, a conven-ient way to shift blame and avoid discussing difficult issues like Jerusalem, security and refugees. Yet that is exactly why a settlement freeze—with no exceptions for natural growth—is so important. A freeze may be a symbolic gesture, but it also removes an excuse.

Olmert and his team never seemed to master the art of diplomatic symbolism. When I met with one of the former prime minister's deputies at a café in Tel Aviv recently, I asked him to respond to Erekat's complaints. The Olmert aide lifted a hand and silently extended his middle finger.

© 2009