JERUSALEM, Jan. 10 (UPI) -- A quiet Jerusalem street named after the 1947 U.N. Partition Plan bears one of the most potent signs of the latest political change in Israel.
The street is kaf-tet benovember, Hebrew for Nov. 29, the date the United Nations decided to partition historic Palestinian into Jewish and Arab states. That is where acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert lives.
It contains old Arab homes built of rectangular rough-edged Jerusalem stone, the Italian Consulate and Olmert's three-story house with arch-shaped windows.
Now police block that street. Barriers and ribbons keep pedestrians on the opposite sidewalk, cameras monitor the fence surrounding the house and blue canvas covers a garage so Olmert may enter and leave his armored car out of a sniper's sight.
He can no longer go to a stadium to cheer his favorite soccer team, and must clear with the Shabak security agency every visit and his daily miles-long runs.
Olmert now heads a caretaker government that has almost all the powers of a regular government, even to wage war. It cannot be deposed, but political tradition provides that it does not initiate any new bold steps.
That means no dramatic initiatives are likely before April or May, that is after the March 28 Knesset elections and the swearing in of a new government.
At the moment it seems Olmert, 60, is likely to head that government. Senior members of his Kadima Party have accepted his leadership and public opinion polls indicate that if elections were held now, Kadima will emerge the biggest party.
According to a poll published Monday, Kadima (without Prime Minister Ariel Sharon) will win 37 mandates in the 120-seat Knesset, followed by Labor with 20 and Likud with 17. Smaller parties would share the rest.
Olmert grew up in a politically active home. His father, Mordechai, was a member of the Irgun Zevai Leumi underground before Israel's establishment. He was later a member of Knesset representing Herut, which grew out of the Irgun and evolved into Likud.
They lived in a small community, Binyamina, south of Haifa. Ehud started his military service in the infantry but was transferred to the army's weekly, Bamahaneh. Years later, at 35, he felt his military background was lacking so he went through an officers' course.
He studied psychology, philosophy and law at Hebrew University in Jerusalem (earning a B.A. and an LLB), and also began political activities in a Herut student cell.
By 1990 he was minister of health and in 1993, he won the race for mayor of Jerusalem, a difficult position since it involves Jews and Arabs, orthodox and secular people, in a tense, sensitive city that is one of the poorest in Israel. He held that position for 10 years and seemed more concerned about political issues with national implications than about cleaning the streets.
He returned to the government in 2003 as deputy prime minister and minister of industry, trade and labor. When Binyamin Netanyahu resigned as finance minister on the eve of the withdrawal from Gaza, Sharon appointed Olmert to that post, too.
"He is today the single-most experienced minister in Sharon's Cabinet. He is highly capable of making decisions," noted professor Arye Carmon, president of the Israel Democracy Institute.
Hebrew University Political Science professor Abraham Diskin said Olmert was a skillful politician, an industrious person who works 20 hours a day. Anat Hoffman, who headed the opposition to Olmert in the Jerusalem City Council, acknowledged he was "a very, very bright man (with a) phenomenal memory, world wide connections and a high level of culture."
She recalled one of his first days as mayor when he asked for a detailed report on services to the Arab East Jerusalemites. He got three volumes full of shortcomings. He did not do much for the East Jerusalemites but the document enabled him to rebuff criticism by showing the state in which he got that area. It was a brilliant move, she said.
"Some 40 years after he entered politics, Olmert is familiar with every intrigue and every trick," wrote Tom Segev in the Haaretz newspaper. "He is one of the most cynical politicians but ... knows not only what may be done and what not but also what must not be done."
On the other hand, people consider him arrogant, cold and unfriendly. He often sounded combative.
"His biggest liability would be his personality, not his past record," said Hoffman.
For years he seemed a right-wing hawk. Olmert was involved in building the controversial Har Homa neighborhood between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, helped establish a Jewish mini-settlement in the Ras al-Amud neighborhood near the Mount of Olives, was involved in the 1996 opening of the tunnel along the Western Wall that led to deadly clashes, and aggressively pushed for demolition of illegally built Arab houses.
Behind that façade was an open mind. Olmert "maintained contacts with Palestinians 15 years ago when it was still illegal," noted Diskin.
"One of the major things that signifies Ehud Olmert is his pragmatism. He never was an ideologue," said Carmon.
That pragmatism led him to the political center.
"Ehud has undergone a certain process of readjusting his political views in the last several years and I think today more than anyone else he is the leader of the Israeli political center. ... It's not something that happened overnight," Carmon said.
Olmert became an outspoken advocate for a unilateral withdrawal even when that made him very unpopular in the hawkish right-wing Likud. Carmon said he believed Olmert was "the strategist behind many of Sharon's decisions."
"I was the one that pushed this program of disengagement," Olmert told reporters a few months before Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip and evacuated four settlements in the northern West Bank.
"I was the first to spell it out, I was the one that actually made the first move, long before anyone else, including, by the way, Prime Minister Sharon," he added.
If he sticks to what he told diplomats and foreign correspondents at the Institute for Contemporary Affairs in Jerusalem on Feb. 3, 2004, then he will push for more unilateral withdrawals.
The disengagement "strategy is not restricted necessarily only to the Gaza district," he said.
"The strategy is comprehensive and it will relate to all of the territories. Disengagement will have to take place equally in the West Bank. ... As long as we talk about unilateral moves, I think the basic parameter has to be minimum Arabs under the jurisdiction and administration of the State of Israel, and maximum Jews."
For years the idea of dividing Jerusalem was taboo in Israel, but Olmert seemed ready for change. As mayor he indicated Jerusalem's boundaries should exclude Kafr Akeb near Ramallah. The municipal boundaries haven't changed but Kafr Akeb is now beyond the security barrier Israel is building in Jerusalem.
In his address to the diplomats he declared, "Israel is not going to withdraw any time in the future to the 1967 lines or divide Jerusalem. The Temple Mount and the Old City and major parts of the city of Jerusalem will remain continuously, indefinitely, under the full sovereignty of the State of Israel. And there will be other areas that will not be evacuated by Israel."
Tough talk, but the Old City covers only 1 percent of Jerusalem's territory. If it and "major parts of the city" are to remain in Israeli hands, what does that mean for the rest, if not a readiness to withdraw?
Polls and the right's failure to stop last year's pullback indicate many Israelis are tired of the occupation and of the settlements. The withdrawal set a precedent that might make it easier for Olmert to follow.
