Olmert's Hilltop Heachache

It was an untimely embarrassment for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Today of all days, when U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was in town to crank up the latest Arab-Israeli peace initiative, thousands of rightwing Jewish settlers decided to march into the West Bank and re-claim Homesh, an illegal hilltop settlement emptied out, with much trouble, in 2005. This can't have pleased Ms. Rice. As part of the latest peace plan, she is leaning on Olmert a little harder than usual to start dismantling Jewish outposts inside the Palestinian territories, not letting settlers grab back old ones.

But Olmert's trajectory in the polls is similar to a man who has taken a tumble off a skyscraper and is just inches from hitting the pavement. Olmert's approval rating is down to 2%, according to the latest polls. And so, cornered between an irate Ms Rice and the ugly certainty of Israeli soldiers tangling with Jewish activists, many of them teenagers and young orthodox families, Olmert and his army chiefs reached an awkward compromise with the right-wingers: they could march up to Homesh but they couldn't stay.

The simplest solution, you would think, would be to use troops and police to keep them away. But the settler activists numbered around 3,000, and the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) said it was worried that they would try to reach Homesh along the back roads that wind through Palestinian villages where furious locals might be tempted to kidnap the settlers or shoot them dead.

The deal, according to Olmert, was that the settlers could make a symbolic entry into Homesh and then turn around and leave.

But the settlers had other plans. The trooped up to Homesh with sleeping bags, tents and plenty of attitude. Thirty families said they were coming to re-colonize the settlement, and by mid-morning an Israeli flag was rippling atop a water tower in the chill Sumerian winds. “Even if we're evacuated, we'll return the next day,” one organizer vowed.

In the Knesset, leftist parties were outraged that Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz had buckled to the settlers' demands. "The defense minister is turning IDF soldiers, against their will, into accomplices to a crime," Knesset Memmber Zahava Gal-On from the leftist Meretz party said. "Instead of the IDF enforcing the law and preventing the settlers from reaching Homesh, it is ensuring their security and facilitating their arrival."

But for Olmert, better the wrath of Ms. Rice and Knesset members than a head-bashing showdown between the army and Jewish settlers. Still, it can only convince the Americans and the Arabs that Olmert is too politically frail to make the bold moves required for peace.
--by Tim McGirk/Jerusalem