The flaws in Abbas’s initiative arose from the wrong assumption that he could reconcile his domestic crisis and use a united Hamas Fatah alliance to strong-arm Israel into reopening peace talks or face the consequence of renewed attacks. There was much more in the covenant that the Mossad analysts knew would be rejected. One example was its repetitive demand for Palestinian refugees to return to their former lands in Israel, the mystical “right of return.” The document also represented a clear departure from Fatah’s willingness to consider compromises on border adjustments and the controversial position of Jerusalem. All these had been stumbling blocks in the past. Now the document made it clear that they were non-negotiable. Legitimized by Abbas’s endorsement, it led to further radicalization of Fatah and the growing fear in Israel that it did not have a negotiating partner on the Palestinian side, regardless of who was in office in Gaza and the West Bank. The expectations of Houston, never high, were now dead.
As the first quarter of 2006 drew to a close, for part of what was called “the education of Ehud Olmert,” Mossad continued, on the sixth floor of its headquarters, to supply the new prime minister with only carefully selected intelligence. The mood within Mossad was that Olmert was still struggling to shake off the shadow of his illustrious predecessor, Ariel Sharon. With tensions mounting in Gaza and the West Bank, and further north on the border with Lebanon and in the Beka’a Valley, the fear was that Olmert did not yet have Ariel Sharon’s capability to see what Meir Dagan called “the big picture.” Israelis continued to have deep reservations about Olmert’s political decisions, though few would deny they could count on “Arik”—the nickname that the comatose Sharon had enjoyed all his political life—to fight in their corner. And unlike other flamboyant characters who had occupied the prime minister’s office—including the devious Moshe Dayan, the iconic Yitzhak Rabin, and the driven “Bibi” Netanyahu—Ehud Olmert gave the impression of being the backroom, career politician who had risen, almost without trace, to implement Sharon’s plan to complete Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from the Palestinian territories it had occupied since the Six-Day War in 1967. While Israelis were open to persuasion by Ariel Sharon, they increasingly wondered if Olmert had the skills to ensure that Israel would not be drawn into conflict. In a martial nation like Israel, whose voters have traditionally been reassured by the presence of a battle-hardened veteran at the political helm, Meir Dagan knew that Olmert faced a massive task in trying to convince his countrymen that their security was as safe in his hands as it had been under Ariel Sharon.
With Mahmoud Abbas’s power base in Gaza almost daily being further eroded and Hamas’s continued rhetoric against its near neighbor, Ehud Olmert became more belligerent. While Israeli prime ministers have rarely been inclined to demonstrate restraint when responding to Arab provocation because the eye-for-an-eye ethos is far too deeply ingrained in the national psyche, the language coming from the new prime minister raised the question: Just how serious was his government in coming to a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians?
Mossad analysts increasingly felt that irrespective of the pledges Ehud Olmert had given President Bush and Prime Minister Blair about adhering to the principles of the much-maligned “road map” for a permanent Arab/Israeli peace deal, Olmert would welcome the chance for a military resolution with Hamas and Hezbollah, a view his generals also encouraged. They saw it as one way to deal with the “plight of the Palestinians,” the potent propaganda tool for radical Islamic groups in the Middle East and beyond—a tool which would remain as long as the Palestinian aspirations for statehood remained unfulfilled. There was a feeling in Mossad that Ehud Olmert wanted an opportunity to show he was as rough as Ariel Sharon, both as politician and as a military leader. That feeling had been reinforced by what Meir Dagan described at his weekly senior staff meeting in early May 2006, as “a Shia expansion.” He asked them to “join the dots” and find answers to pressing questions. What was the exact nature of the current link between Hezbollah and Hamas after Iran’s President Ahmadinejad had publicly embraced the Sunni organization? What was the involvement of Iran in Gaza and the West Bank? Was there evidence of a shift of power between Syria and Iran, which could change the geopolitics of the region for the foreseeable future?
