Olmert: I’m Not Re-entering Politics
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told an Israeli television news magazine that he decided not to run in the upcoming elections due to rifts in the Center-Left political camp.
Olmert, former head of the Kadima Party, also threw his support behind current Kadima Party leader Shaul Mofaz, during an interview Saturday night on Israel Channel Two’s “Meet the Press.”
Olmert said he recently faced the most pressure ever of his political life to run for public office. But, he added, “I was never close to coming back, and I never told any writers I was running.”
Olmert said the only politician he spoke to about a political comeback was former Kadima Party head Tzipi Livni, who he said told him she would be willing to be his number two on a political list.
He called Livni, who ultimately formed her own new party called Hatnua, or the movement, “deserving of the job” of prime minister, but called Mofaz “very deserving of the job,” adding “He is a serious public figure and someone who courageously stood at the head of Israel’s security.”
Olmert called the announcement of a plan to build 3,000 apartments in the E1 corridor connecting Jerusalem to the large Maale Adumim settlement “a kind of slap in the face of the president of the United States.”
“Netanyahu is isolating the State of Israel from entire world in an unprecedented way, and we are going to pay a difficult price for this in every aspect of our lives,” he said.
Discussing the legal proceedings against him, Olmert said, “The court completely exonerated me.”
“Everyone knows that I wasn’t acquitted out of reasonable doubt, I was acquitted by a unanimous decision of three judges,” he said.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
