• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

Probe into Olmert's Finances Imperils Israeli-Palestinian Peace Outline

Council on Foreign Relations

Interviewee: David Makovsky, Director, Project on the Middle East Peace Process, Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Interviewer: Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor

May 15, 2008

David Makovsky, an expert on Israeli politics, says there is concern that if Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is forced to resign as a result of the investigation into his finances, this could turn "to an unraveling of whatever has been done on the Palestinian issue." In an interview from Israel, Makovsky says Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas were close to some statement of principles that might serve as a document for both sides to ratify on the outlines of a peace treaty. He says that even though both are politically weak, they "actually trust each other and believe the other one wants peace. They've spent a lot of hours talking about these core issues—refugees, land, and security."

May 14 is the sixtieth anniversary of Israel's independence in the Western calendar. President Bush and other dignitaries have arrived. What's the mood in Israel like these days? Is it celebratory or are people rather sober about the tough problems ahead?

It's a mixture. Because of concerns from afar like Iran and from near like Hamas, there is concern about the next threat but the sixtieth birthday is a chance for many Israelis to look back at their achievement. The country in 1948 had 600,000 people; it now has 7 million. Despite all the wars they were able to build a democracy and are now in the OECD [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development] with a very enviable high-tech sector. There is an element of pride and achievement that is tempered by threats and is also tempered by the current political crisis—the news reports about the investigation into Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's finances.

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

Copyright 2008 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.