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Follow Jewish TimesWho is Ehud Olmert?
Maayan Jaffe
Staff Reporter
Ehud Olmert is Israel’s outgoing prime minister. Having faced multiple corruption investigations, Mr. Olmert this past August announced that he would resign as head of the Kadimah Party and thus as prime minister. While vice prime minister in late 2005, he had helped Ariel Sharon form Kadimah. Mr. Olmert took the top job after Mr. Sharon fell into a coma in January 2006.
Because his Kadimah successor, Tzippy Livni, cannot form a government, new elections are coming. Their victor will then form a government and Mr. Olmert will formally step down.
An attorney, Mr. Olmert entered the Knesset in 1974 at age 29 through the Likud Party. He also served as mayor of Jerusalem from 1993 to 2003. In the mid-1990s, he was accused of corruption but not charged after a police investigation.
A few months after becoming prime minister, Mr. Olmert responded to Hezbollah’s killing and kidnapping of Israeli soldiers with what became the second Lebanon War. The conflict was widely considered a military failure and Mr. Olmert’s popularity ratings plummeted to single digits. Still, Mr. Olmert held on to his office. In the past year he has aggressively pushed peace talks with the Palestinians and Syrians.
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