West Bank prison raid brightens Olmert's political star

Ehud Olmert

JERUSALEM - Ehud Olmert fought the battle of Jericho and the praise came in a cascade of headlines in Israel on Wednesday hailing his dramatic move ahead of a national election less than two weeks away.

The operation at a prison in the West Bank city to seize a Palestinian militant leader accused by Israel of killing one of its cabinet ministers in 2001 may not have been popular overseas, but it won applause inside the Jewish state.

"We got them," Israel's mass circulation Maariv daily trumpeted in a red banner headline, referring to Ahmed Saadat and other incarcerated members of his Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

"The account is settled," said a front-page headline in the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper above a photograph of a blindfolded Saadat being led away by Israeli soldiers.

Olmert, interim prime minister and head of the centrist Kadima party, even drew accolades for the raid from his main challengers in the March 28 poll, Benjamin Netanyahu of the right-wing Likud party and Amir Peretz of center-left Labour.

Voters surveyed before the day-long operation in an opinion poll released after the assault ended gave Kadima 42 seats in the 120-member parliament, boosting its strong lead over Labour and Likud. Post-raid polls are expected on Friday.

"Voters love these kind of operations in which the enemy is humiliated and our forces return safely to base," political commentator Nahum Barnea wrote in Yedioth Ahronoth.

"Olmert set the line: siege, a cool attitude and patience while waiting for surrender," Barnea said.

Faced with overwhelming Israeli force, Palestinian prisoners - ordered to strip down to their underwear to show they were not carrying weapons or bombs - walked with arms raised over their heads out of Jericho prison, where bulldozers tore apart its walls.

The surrender scene was another blow to moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose long-dominant Fatah faction and its vision of a negotiated peace with Israel were crushed in a January 25 election by the Islamic militant group Hamas.

Abbas earlier condemned Israel's raid on a West Bank prison and seizure of a militant leader as a crime that would not be forgiven.

"What happened is an ugly crime which cannot be forgiven and a humiliation for the Palestinian people and a violation of all the agreements. Their arrest by Israel is illegal," Abbas said.

But with Abbas dismissed as irrelevant by Olmert's foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, Israel is threatening to bypass him with unilateral moves to draw a final border with the Palestinians after a Hamas-led government is in place.

"The capture of the killers of (cabinet minister Rehavam Zeevi) fell into Ehud Olmert's hand like ripe fruit," commentator Sima Kadmon wrote in Yedioth Ahronoth.

"The operation was smooth, no one (in Israel) questioned its legitimacy, the political timing was perfect and it provided an answer to undecided right-wing voters without upsetting leftists," she said.

Israeli officials said there was no choice but to raid the prison after the exit of international monitors who had been supervising Saadat's incarceration in Jericho under a deal that ended a 2002 siege of the late Yasser Arafat's Ramallah compound, where the PFLP leader had sought refuge.

The PFLP has claimed responsibility for Zeevi's killing and Israel said it would put Saadat and alleged members of the assassination squad on trial.

Palestinians said the operation would further dim prospects for peacemaking.

Ben Caspit, a Maariv commentator, predicted that Olmert's election hopes could only brighten. "Kadima is laughing all the way to the ballot box," he wrote.

- REUTERS