Olmert says Israel must withdraw from West Bank for peace

"The decision we are going to have to make is a decision we have been refusing for 40 years to look at open-eyed," the Israeli leader told the Yediot Aharonot newspaper. "The time has come to say these things. The time has come to put them on the table."

Olmert has resigned from the premiership because of a host of corruption investigations. But he remains in a caretaker position while Tzipi Livni, his successor as head of the ruling Kadima party, works to assemble a new government.

His interview with the prominent Israeli daily amounted to both a challenge to beliefs held as central to the Jewish state and a personal mea culpa. Though fresh rounds of talks with the Palestinian Authority and Syria were launched under his watch, Olmert acknowledged some of the positions he was advocating in the interview -- such as the division of Jerusalem -- were things he opposed during most of his 35-year political career.

"I am the first who wanted to enforce Israeli sovereignty on the entire city," said Olmert, a former mayor of Jerusalem, noting that he opposed the 1978 Camp David accords between Israel and Egypt. "For a large portion of these years, I was unwilling to look at the reality in all its depth."

It is unclear what impact Olmert's statements will have, since he is most likely in the final weeks of his administration.

But it offered a telling portrait of Israeli political life and the constraints facing prime ministers who must constantly hedge their views on land-for-peace deals and especially on Jerusalem in order to maintain their governing coalitions.

Since it became clear more than a month ago that he would have to resign, Olmert has charted an increasingly leftist course in a country where right and left are often defined by how much land one is willing to cede to the Palestinians.

Seemingly freed from the pressure of courting the right-wing vote, Olmert has spoken out harshly against violence committed by Jewish settlers in the West Bank. After a prominent leftist professor and author was injured by a bomb left outside his home, Olmert warned Sunday of "an evil wind of extremism" sweeping through Israel.