Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was questioned by the Israeli police on August 1 for the fourth time in a corruption investigation that has brought about his political downfall. Friday’s three-hour session was the latest round of questioning on suspicions that Olmert improperly accepted or misappropriated money from foreign sources. On July 30 Olmert announced that he will resign after his Kadima Party holds primaries in September to replace him. The investigation has diminished Olmert’s ability to conclude peace deals with the Palestinians and Syria, although he has said he will persist in those efforts as long as he is in office.

Olmert has been in trouble many times in the course of his long and colorful political career, but that career appears to be nearing an inglorious end.

He was suspected of receiving bribes, as mayor of Jerusalem, in the “Greek island affair” involving former Premier Ariel Sharon and his son Omri (who was eventually convicted and jailed for seven months); but the case against Olmert was closed in 2004 without charges. In 2006 an inquiry was opened on the 1999 sale and lease-back of Olmert’s house in Jerusalem that allegedly netted him some $330,000, leading to a criminal investigation a year later. In January 2007 he was the subject of another inconclusive criminal investigation over accusations that, as finance minister in late 2005, he tried to help a close personal associate buy the state-owned Bank Leumi. Also last year his political opponents accused him of improper business dealings and conflict of interest during his tenure as minister of trade and industry.

In all those cases no smoking gun was revealed, however, leading Olmert to conclude somewhat smugly that he was “indestructible.”

The current investigation involving Olmert is different, however. It was opened in early May not in response to media reports or investigations by the State Comptroller, like the previous ones, but as the result of information revealed during earlier probes. According to Israeli police statement of three months ago, “The investigation deals with suspicions that the prime minister received significant sums of money from a foreigner or number of foreign individuals over an extended period of time.” American-Jewish businessman Morris Talansky was eventually named as a key witness, along with Olmert’s long-time secretary Shula Zaken and his former law partner Uri Messer. Investigators are said to have cracked coded notes kept by Zaken of sums given by Talansky, to whom she referred in her notes as “The Laundry Man.”

Olmert still denies any wrongdoing . “I look each and every one of you in the eye and say, I never took bribes. I never took a penny for myself,” he declared in a televized address on May 8, and he still maintains that he is innocent. He said all the cash he received was legitimate support from Talansky to fund various election bids, including two successful campaigns for mayor of Jerusalem in 1993 and 1998, a failed candidacy for the Likud leadership in 1999 and a further internal Likud election in 2002. He also said Talansky “helped me cover deficits” after elections.

Talansky’s Israeli court testimony presented a darker picture, however. He said he handed over about $150,000 of his own money to Olmert, directly and through aides, over a 15-year period, and additional sums from fundraising. He did not know how the money had been spent: “I only know he loved expensive cigars. I know he loved pens, watches.” According to Talansky, on one occasion Olmert also asked him for a personal loan of $25,000 for a holiday in Italy. On another, he walked to a bank to withdraw $15,000 in cash for a loan as Olmert waited in a nearby New York hotel; neither loan has been repaid. Talansky also covered some of Olmert’s expenses during speaking tours of the US, above what Olmert received from the institutions hosting him. In the final years of their relationship, according to Talansky, he brought Olmert ten envelopes stuffed with cash in New York, and gave a number of additional envelopes to his secretary.

After Talansky’s testimony Olmert came under pressure to go. Former prime minister Ehud Barak was the first government minister serving in Olmert’s coalition to call for his resignation. Similar calls have come from within Kadima, with Knesset member Amir Dotan urging Olmert to demonstrate “personal leadership” by quitting. Her colleague Ze’ev Elkin declared that “the prime minister must resign… Israel cannot allow such a situation to go on.” Even Olmert’s staunch loyalists, such as Kadima deputy Yoel Hasson, were saying that Olmert had to “carefully consider his position in light of the circumstances.”

Regardless of Olmert’s decision to succumb to pressure, the loser in the affair is the remnant of the “peace process” with the Palestinians; but that process was not going anywhere anyway.

A year ago I talked at some length to a man who knows Olmert well, his advisor on Christian affairs during the second of his two terms as mayor of Jerusalem (1993-2003). Shmuel Evyatar says that his former boss cannot imagine himself as a former politician: “to him, political power is everything, an end in itself, the purpose of his very existence; he is a politician with a big P.”

The syndrome sounds familiar, especially with the grim choice we face next November, and the prediction is easy to make: Olmert continues to protest his innocence, regardless of evidence, and he will continue to do so regardless of the eventual verdict. A Politician, indeed.

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