Ehud Olmert

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert boasted Monday that he successfully pressured President Bush last week to reverse course on U.S. diplomacy over fighting in Gaza, in an episode that could sharpen tensions between the close allies at a sensitive moment. Speaking to an audience in Ashkelon, Israel, Olmert said he had called Bush last Thursday and convinced him that the United States should not vote for a pending U.N. Security Council resolution urging a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip.

The split screen seemed to capture Israel's mood of frustration over its setbacks in recent years. On one side, television viewers saw the somber face of Ehud Olmert as he addressed them Tuesday evening for perhaps the last time as prime minister. His message: Marathon efforts to win the release of a captured soldier had failed. The other side showed the soldier's dejected parents as they listened from a tent outside Olmert's residence.

Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was indicted today in corruption scandals that drove him to resign last year, a long-awaited legal step that made him the first current or former holder of Israel's most powerful office to be charged with a criminal offense. The decision by Atty. Gen. Menahem Mazuz will give Israelis a single judicial airing of three cases against Olmert that, along with other scandals involving senior government officials, have undermined public confidence in the country's politicians in recent years.