Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert presided over Israel’s 2006 war with Hezbollah, and served as deputy prime minister when Israel withdrew its soldiers and settlers from Gaza in 2005.Rafael Yaghobzadeh/The Globe and Mail
Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert has proposed that international troops, possibly led by NATO, take temporary control of the Gaza Strip once the Israeli invasion to destroy Hamas has achieved its aims.
Mr. Olmert, who presided over Israel’s 2006 war with Hezbollah, and served as deputy prime minister when Israel withdrew its soldiers and settlers from Gaza in 2005, said the international troops would likely have to remain in place for several years to stabilize the situation before the Palestinian Authority of president Mahmoud Abbas could take control.
Mr. Olmert said the PA could not be expected to govern the strip immediately after the war because the local population would perceive the PA as having been imposed “on Israeli bayonets.”
Speaking to The Globe and Mail at his office in Tel Aviv, Mr. Olmert argued that it was in the interests of NATO and the West to participate in any postwar effort to reshape Gaza since the world is already seeing how a surge in fighting between Israel and Hamas can destabilize not only the wider Middle East, but also Western societies that are being divided between pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian sympathizers.
“I think we have to come to the Americans and the Europeans and say: ‘Hey, guys, you want stability? You guys want to avoid any further such military confrontations that will shake the foundations of the Middle East and may create potential larger confrontations? Then you have to contribute what you can do, which is after the fight to send the intervention force of NATO to Gaza,’ ” he said.
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Mr. Olmert’s proposal received a mixed reception from Palestinian leaders.
“We have made our position clear on numerous occasions. We will not be going to Gaza on the back of an Israeli tank,” Sabri Saidam, deputy secretary-general of Mr. Abbas’s Fatah’s central committee, wrote in a message to The Globe.
However, Ahmed Majdalani, a member of the central committee of the umbrella Palestine Liberation Organization, which includes Fatah, said in a phone interview that the PLO was open to the idea as long as the international troops were also deployed in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. “Any talk of an isolated solution for Gaza is rejected completely.”
Mr. Olmert said restoring the PA to power in Gaza needed to happen in concert with a plan to finally make peace between Israel and the Palestinians, a plan he said should involve an independent Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem, which is currently occupied by Israel. He also said Gaza should be allowed to build an airport and a seaport – two moves that Israel has blocked since 2005 – in order to allow residents and businesses to trade with the outside world.
While the end of the war now seems remote – with Israeli troops only beginning ground operations in Gaza on Friday after three weeks of air strikes – Mr. Olmert said that it was essential to start planning for the day after.
He said his main worry was that – as the Palestinian death toll continues to climb – Western governments would press Israel to end its military operation in Gaza before Hamas was defeated. He also said no progress could be made until his long-time rival Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was removed from power.
On Saturday, Mr. Netanyahu gave his first news conference since the start of the conflict, calling it Israel’s “second war of independence,” after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that led to the creation of the Jewish state. Mr. Netanyahu also summoned the memory of the Holocaust in his remarks. “Our objective is singular: to defeat the murderous enemy. We declared never again, and we reiterate: never again, now,” he said.
Mr. Olmert said such rhetoric was designed to unify Israelis around Mr. Netanyahu’s leadership.
“No one trusts Bibi,” Mr. Olmert said, referring to the Prime Minister by his nickname. He said Mr. Netanyahu, who succeeded him in 2009 and who has served as prime minister for all but 18 months since then, had rejected making any concessions to the PA over that time – a move that Mr. Olmert said had strengthened Hamas by making it seem to Palestinians and Israelis alike that peace was impossible.
Mr. Olmert left Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party in 2005 to join the late Ariel Sharon in forming the centrist Kadima movement – with its main policy being the Gaza withdrawal – then succeeded Mr. Sharon as leader and prime minister when Mr. Sharon suffered a stroke the following year. Mr. Netanyahu, who had previously served as prime minister in the late 1990s, returned to power in 2009 after Mr. Olmert resigned in the face of corruption charges.
Mr. Olmert said it was crucial that the West have the “stamina” to stand by Israel as civilian casualties rise in Gaza. On Sunday, the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Hamas-ruled Gaza said more than 8,000 people had been killed by 23 days of Israeli air strikes, as well as the siege Israel has imposed on Gaza since Hamas staged its attack on southern Israel.
In the Oct. 7 Hamas invasion, militants went on a killing spree that left more than 1,400 Israelis dead.
“The question is whether Israel will be allowed to accomplish his job,” he said. “Hamas is the main threat to stability and to potential political momentum between Israel and the Palestinians. There can be no compromise with Hamas.”
Mr. Olmert oversaw the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006 that began with Hezbollah staging a cross-border raid that killed 10 Israeli soldiers and ended with 165 Israelis and more than 1,200 Lebanese dead as swaths of southern Lebanon were reduced to rubble. While Mr. Olmert was harshly criticized at the time for the high civilian death toll, he said the war brought 17 years of peace to northern Israel by destroying much of Hezbollah’s military capability.
The ceasefire agreement that was reached after 33 days of conflict also brought a beefed-up United Nations peacekeeping force to the Lebanese side of the border. However, UN peacekeepers have largely stood aside over the past three weeks as Hezbollah and Israel have traded regular and deadly cross-border fire, and Mr. Olmert acknowledged that the northern front could erupt at the same time as Israel was battling Hamas in the south.
The 78-year-old Mr. Olmert said he had a similar plan for Gaza – drive out Hamas and then call for an international force to take security control of the strip before handing it to the PA – in 2008 when he ordered Operation Cast Lead, an Israeli military incursion that followed incessant Hamas rocket fire.
Mr. Olmert, who by then was serving as acting prime minister after announcing his resignation to face corruption charges, said international outcry over the more than 1,200 Palestinians killed in the 22-day war – combined with his precarious political position – forced him to order a halt to the operation before he could roll out the rest of his plan.
He was later convicted of fraud, breach of trust and tax evasion, eventually serving 16 months in prison.
Uriel Abulof, associate professor of political science at Tel Aviv University, said that while Mr. Olmert was hugely unpopular by the time he left office, he was in hindsight “remembered as a courageous politician and leader” because of his decision to confront Hezbollah, as well as his role in Israel’s departure from Gaza. Prof. Abulof said the latter move was spoiled by the “huge mistake” of not co-ordinating the Gaza withdrawal with the PA, which created a power vacuum that was filled by Hamas.
Mr. Olmert, who has three grandchildren serving in the Israeli military, said he and Mr. Abbas – in peace talks held just before he left office – were closer to making peace than anyone realized.
“Abu Mazen for a long time afterward used to say that had I remained in power for another three, four months, there would have been peace between us and them. But the fact was that he didn’t say yes to this plan. Why? Because of his weakness, because of the fear of the dominance of Hamas,” he said, referring to Mr. Abbas by his nickname. Mr. Saidam, however, said the 2008 peace effort had failed because Mr. Olmert refused to show Mr. Abbas a map of his proposal to share sovereignty over Jerusalem.
Peace talks could be back on the agenda after the current war, Mr. Olmert predicted, but only if both Hamas and Mr. Netanyahu were gone.
With reports from Nuha Musleh in Ramallah