Top aide is loyalist, pragmatist

JERUSALEM — Ehud Olmert, who took over as acting prime minister Wednesday after Ariel Sharon was hospitalized, has been the Israeli leader's steadfast ally as the pair shifted over time from ideological hard-liners to advocates for withdrawing from the Gaza Strip and part of the West Bank.

The 60-year-old vice premier, a lawyer who once served as Jerusalem's mayor, was among the core of Likud Party members to accompany Sharon in November when the prime minister abandoned the conservative party to found a centrist movement called Kadima, Hebrew for "Forward."

Olmert is generally considered Sharon's No. 2 in Kadima, though no one in the fledgling party enjoys the prime minister's popularity, according to opinion polls.

But Olmert, who also is finance minister, has been a reliable barometer of Sharon's thinking. He publicly floated the idea of a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and a piece of the northern West Bank before the prime minister did and later became one of the move's most important supporters.

Like Sharon, he has said that Israel must make painful concessions if it is to resolve its bloody conflict with the Palestinians.

Both men were long steadfast in refusing to yield Israel's hold on territories captured in the 1967 Middle East War. They since championed a unilateral approach under which Israel would pull back to lines designed to ensure its long-term viability as a Jewish state.

Like other hard-liners, Olmert opposed the 1978 peace agreement with Egypt that called for Israel to relinquish the Sinai Peninsula.

"I voted against Menachem Begin," Olmert said last year, referring to the late prime minister and Likud leader who signed the accord. "I told him it was a historic mistake, how dangerous it would be, and so on and so on. Now I am sorry he is not alive for me to be able to publicly recognize his wisdom and my mistake."

Olmert aired the notion of unilateral pullbacks in 2003, weeks before Sharon laid out his vision for "disengagement" from certain areas claimed by Palestinians for a future state. Olmert since has claimed credit for coming up with the idea, which ultimately led to Israel's pullout during summer from all 21 Jewish settlements in Gaza and four others in the West Bank.

Olmert said withdrawing from areas populated by Palestinians was the only way to assure that Israel maintained a Jewish majority and survived as a Jewish nation.

"Of course, I would prefer a negotiated agreement," he told the Haaretz newspaper in November 2003, a month before Sharon unveiled the pullout plan. "But I personally doubt that such an agreement can be reached within the time frame available to us."

Olmert was widely considered a likely candidate to succeed Sharon long before the prime minister's recent health problems. He served as minister of industry and trade for two years before taking over the finance post in August, when Benjamin Netanyahu resigned to protest the impending Gaza pullout.

An activist in right-wing politics since childhood, Olmert was first elected to the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, in 1973, at age 28. He has served as health minister and minister without portfolio, and headed the Likud's campaign effort when Sharon was re-elected in 2003.

Among other possible successors is justice minister Tzipi Livni, 47, the most senior woman in Sharon's inner circle. She has endorsed ceding some occupied land to the Palestinians as a means of preserving Israel's Jewish majority, and has campaigned for foreign pressure on the Palestinians to disarm Hamas and other militant groups.

Another candidate could be defense minister and former army chief Shaul Mofaz, a security hawk who nevertheless backed the evacuation of Gaza.

Information on Livni and Mofaz was reported by Reuters.