Tomorrow is the Kadima primary, which will decide who will replace Ehud Olmert as Prime Minister. Olmert has promised he will resign his post when a new leader is picked. Most Israelis see this as the long-awaited end to Olmert’s less-than-stellar political career (unless we count falling stars). But is it?

Two things make me wonder whether he is really leaving us after all. First, Olmert has continued making bold statements about the peace process, yesterday veering sharply to the Left, warning Israelis that a peace agreement with the Palestinians will require some kind of land exchange, in which Israel gets to keep large settlement blocs in exchange for territory on the pre-1967 side of the border, announcing that Israel would participate in some kind of international plan for the refugees, which really means agreeing to absorb some fairly small number in order to give the Palestinians the ability to say they had “returned” refugees to their 1948 homeland. He also apologized for the expulsion of Palestinians in 1948.

The second is that he yesterday told members of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, who wished to give him an honorable farewell, that no good-byes are needed, since “I’ll still be here.”

The most striking conclusion is that he has no intention of going anywhere. In other words, even if he quits his post as Prime Minister, Olmert has every intention of continuing to play a vital role in the Israeli government, either as Foreign Minister or, more likely, in a major advisory role in Israeli foreign policy. Given his power in the party, it’s entirely possible that he has already worked out such a deal with the most likely candidate to replace him, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. As a major government minister, Olmert would be under huge pressure to quit if he were indicted on the multiple corruption charges he currently faces. But as an informal advisor, he could conceivably stick around until convicted–a process that could take much longer.

Meanwhile, events on the ground suggest that both the PA and Syria are trying to take steps towards a deal. A Syrian opposition group reports that the sidekick of Hamas leader Khaled Mashal was gunned down in Syria, and this follows on the heels of Syria’s reported expulsion of Mashal himself, to the Sudan. And Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas has started compromising on the question of refugees, for the first time recognizing that it is unreasonable to demand that Israel accept the 4 million people currently listed by the UN as Palestinian refugees.

One of the sharpest differences between American and Israeli politics is that in America, a single scandal will often destroy a politician’s career; whereas in Israel, it seems that very little can happen to keep a talented politician away for too long. As the case of Aryeh Deri has shown, even jail time need not mark the end of a career. Nobody should count Olmert out.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 16th, 2008 at 9:49 AM and is filed under Contentions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.