Israel is inching toward using military force against Hamas in the Gaza Strip because Egyptian ceasefire efforts there are not “ripening,” Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Thursday.
Olmert, who was wrapping up a US visit dominated by discussions on the dangers of a nuclear Iran, said Israel was not eager to carry out a military operation in the Hamas-controlled territory but would not be deterred if the threat continued.
“As it looks now, it’s closer to a military operation than to another arrangement,” he told reporters.
The reason is because Egyptian peace efforts “are not ripening in a way that can bring a ceasefire,” he said.
On Thursday, Olmert met with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and spoke by phone with presumptive presidential nominees Barack Obama and John McCain. He also spoke with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.
His office said the discussions centered on the situation in Gaza and the Iranian threat.
Olmert’s legal and political travails have been pushed into the background during his three days in the US, where he received four standing ovations during a speech to pro-Israel supporters and where US President George W. Bush warmly saluted him twice publicly as “my friend” in less than a minute before they met in the Oval Office.
Olmert called Iran “the main threat to all of us” ahead of his meeting on Wednesday with Bush and later told reporters that it dominated the leaders’ discussions.
Bush sought to reassure Israelis who are worried about the US commitment to keeping Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said Israel will one day be “wiped off the map.”
“Iran is an existential threat to peace,” Bush said. “It’s very important for the world to take the Iranian threat quite seriously, which the United States does.”
The visit has clearly been a welcome break for the beleaguered Olmert, who appeared relaxed and confident in a talk with reporters on Wednesday. His domestic woes hadn’t come up in his meeting with Bush, he said.
“The US administration is familiar with the developments and follows them, but the meeting dealt with the matters on Israel’s national agenda,” Olmert said.
Before their meeting, Olmert grinned as Bush spoke and then effusively praised the president’s speech last month before the Israeli Knesset in Jerusalem, widely interpreted as favoring Israelis over Palestinians in their long-running dispute. It was, Olmert said, “the best expression of the United States’ commitment to the security and the well-being of the state of Israel.”
Olmert’s political future has been thrown into doubt because of testimony from Morris Talansky, a New York businessman who says he gave Olmert envelopes stuffed with cash over a decade and a half, in part to fund a lavish lifestyle. Olmert’s political allies are conspicuously refusing to come to his defense, and instead are jostling for his job.
Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, would not say whether Olmert’s troubles were a topic of discussion in private. But there are hints the Bush administration understands Olmert may be on his way out. Hadley stressed, as have other administration officials recently, that the negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians were entered into by Olmert “on behalf of the government.” The implication is that the process can continue without Olmert.
This is a shift from Bush’s initial reasoning for why an agreement could be reached this year, which posited that Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas were the right leaders at the right time to reach a historic compromise.
“It involves participation by other ministers in this process — Foreign Minister Livni and Defense Minister Barak,” Hadley said.
“So, at this point, we follow the lead of the parties and the parties have indicated that they want to continue this process.”
Olmert said he thought it was still possible to make real progress before Bush’s ambitious deadline of reaching an agreement by the end of the year. “I hope that we will be able to make decisions during 2008,” he told reporters, and said that “not even half of the year has gone by.”
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