JERUSALEM: Sixty-three per cent of Israelis want Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to resign in a sharp public rebuke over his handling of the war in Lebanon against Hezbollah, a poll showed on Friday.
Many Israelis view a UN-brokered ceasefire backed by Olmert as a failure for Israel because Hezbollah’s leadership was left standing and the two Israeli soldiers, whose capture by Hezbollah on July 12 sparked the war, were still in captivity.
At least 1,110 people in Lebanon and 157 Israelis were killed in the conflict. The Yedioth Aronoth poll showed for the first time a majority favoured Olmert stepping down. Several surveys suggested a big jump in support for the right-wing Likud party and its leader Benjamin Netanyahu after the 34-day war. A poll in the Maariv newspaper showed that only 14 per cent of Israelis would vote for Olmert if new elections were held, while 26 per cent would back Netanyahu, a former prime minister.
The Yedioth poll said 45 per cent would support Netanyahu. Olmert, a career politician who lacks the combat credentials of many of his predecessors, has seen his public standing plummet for failing to crush Hezbollah, which rained some 4,000 rockets on northern Israel during the fighting.
“Olmert go home,” read one sign at a protest by a few hundred army reservists and family members at the grave of former Prime Minister Golda Meir on Friday. The protesters urged Olmert to follow the lead set by Meir, who was forced to resign after the 1973 Middle East war in which Egypt and Syria scored initial successes that caused heavy Israeli casualties.
Yedioth, Israel’s biggest circulation daily, called Friday’s poll results a political “earthquake” for Olmert, whose centrist Kadima party crushed Netanyahu’s Likud in general elections in March. A similar poll published a week ago showed 41 per cent wanted Olmert to resign. Twenty-two per cent of Israelis in the poll deemed Netanyahu “most fit” to be prime minister, compared to 11 per cent for Olmert. Olmert also trailed ultranationalist Avigdor Lieberman with 18 per cent and senior statesman Shimon Peres with 12 per cent, according to Yedioth.
