Israel leader Ehud Olmert to step down
Prime Minister Olmert announces he will not run in his Kadima party's leadership primary and will leave office to fight corruption allegations.
JERUSALEM — Israel entered a months-long season of political uncertainty Wednesday as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's decision to resign in September cast the country into a leadership struggle that could complicate efforts to make peace with its neighbors.
Weakened by corruption scandals, Olmert announced that he would not run in his centrist Kadima party's Sept. 17 leadership primary and would step down afterward to give the new party chairman a chance to form a different government.
That means Israel, which has been negotiating with two Palestinian factions and Syria while grappling with how to confront Iran's nuclear ambitions, will be without effective leadership at least until October.
The power vacuum could even last into February, overlapping the change of U.S. presidential administrations, if a new Israeli government cannot be formed without general elections.
Olmert's decision was not unexpected. A shrewd, affable political survivor who once called himself "indestructible," the 62-year-old leader had battled longer than expected to cling to his job, even as he worked to engage some of Israel's adversaries in peace talks.
Those peace initiatives are likely to be fiercely debated in the race to succeed him.
The leading candidates to head his party are Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Israel's chief negotiator with the Palestinian Authority, and Shaul Mofaz, a more hawkish former defense minister.
Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of the opposition Likud party, who leads in polls as the most popular candidate for prime minister, has voiced strong reservations about the peace initiatives.
At stake are the U.S.-backed negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority over terms for a future Palestinian state. Israel is also talking indirectly with the more militant Palestinian group Hamas about a prisoner exchange and with Syria, through Turkish mediators, about a peace treaty.
Israel's succession struggle also comes amid sensitive discussions among its military and civilian leaders over how to confront what they believe is Iran's rush to develop a nuclear weapon. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, a former prime minister, told U.S. officials in Washington this week that Israel would not rule out military action against Iran in the coming months.
Olmert will serve as a caretaker prime minister until his successor is chosen. He is likely to lean more heavily on his defense minister and Israel's military leaders in decisions about Iran, Israeli analysts said.
