JERUSALEM — Two vivid images define Ehud Olmert's scandal-shortened tenure as Israel's prime minister.
The first, a poster displayed all over the country, showed the faces of two Israeli soldiers captured by Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrillas and of another held by Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip. "Thy children shall come again to their own border," the poster read, a hopeful biblical scripture but a blunt reminder of Olmert's wartime failures.
The second was a word picture drawn by an American financier who testified in court to bankrolling Olmert's exquisite tastes: fine cigars and Montblanc pens, first-class flights and five-star suites, a designer watch and an Italian vacation.
Olmert's decision Wednesday to resign next month sealed his legacy as a symbol of the country's weakened defenses and blatant official corruption. Wounded politically and militarily in Gaza and Lebanon two summers ago, he was finished off at home by dramatic allegations of bribery, fraud and breach of trust.
The impact of his leadership on Israel and the Mideast, however, is broader and more complex. It remains to be seen whether his diplomatic ventures will ultimately lead to a calming of regional tensions.
Olmert, 62, helped engineer a historic realignment of Israel's politics by leading the rise of a centrist party that accepts the creation of a Palestinian state. More than any other mainstream Israeli politician, he admonished his compatriots to give up parts of the Holy Land, even neighborhoods of Jerusalem, in order to maintain a Jewish majority within the borders of a smaller Israel.
After years of stalemate, he set in motion a series of negotiations aimed at curbing threats along the nation's borders while overseeing a period of economic prosperity and declining unemployment.
Yet he undermined the most promising of his peace initiatives, with the U.S.-backed Palestinian Authority, by allowing the expansion of Jewish settlements on West Bank land claimed by the Palestinians for a future state.
In doing so, he defied the Bush administration and weakened his Palestinian negotiating partners. But he strengthened Israel's hold on disputed territory in and around Jerusalem while keeping a broad multiparty coalition intact.
"Olmert was a contradiction," said Yossi Alpher, a former Israeli negotiator who co-edits bitterlemons.org, an online forum for Israeli-Palestinian discussion. "At a declarative level he seemed to understand that Israel must divide the land. But he couldn't act. He was trapped by the hawkish elements of his coalition."
