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Acting PM Ehud Olmert and his wife Aliza (AP)
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Ehud and Aliza Olmert celebrate after early exit polls in the general elections. (AP)
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| By Israel Insider staff and partners April 3, 2006 |
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To understand why a lifelong hawk like Ehud Olmert could come to embody the moderate center of Israeli politics, look no further than his family.
There is his wife, Aliza, a dove even before they married 35 years ago. And his son Shaul, who refused to serve in the army. And his daughter Dana, who is openly gay and even further left than others in the family.
It was not just the household that shaped the man elected last week as Israel's likely next prime minister. Many of the votes for Olmert's Kadima party came from Israelis who, like him, had concluded that the right's dream of ruling a "Greater Israel" including Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip would perpetuate the war with the Palestinians and eventually drown the Jewish state in an Arab population majority.
But in his case, the 60-year-old Olmert says, his wife was a major factor.
"Only a dumb person can say that being in love with one person for 35 years, living with him, being married to him will not influence his point of view," he said in a recent interview with "Frontline," a documentary show aired by the Public Broadcasting Service in the U.S.
His wife and the mother of his four children - a fifth is adopted - is a gray-haired, elegant-looking woman with a shy manner, who is largely unknown to the Israeli public. A social worker and artist, she has crafted a career separate from her husband's. She says she is hesitant to take on the role of prime minister's wife - a position left vacant during the widowed Ariel Sharon's five years in office.
She and the children are an eclectic, opinionated bunch, and Olmert, in his victory speech, acknowledged them all.
"Your patience, your wisdom, your ability to disagree with me frequently and your understanding in agreeing with me infrequently - all these gave me strength, enthusiasm, faith and hope," he said.
They also helped him evolve politically from ideologue to pragmatist.
Olmert grew up with three brothers in an ideologically driven household that believed in a Greater Israel that would make no territorial concessions to the Arabs. Ehud Olmert trained as a lawyer but soon went into politics, serving in the right-wing governments of Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir.
In college he met the woman who much later would become a part of his political evolution.
They knew they were ideologically apart, but it hardly mattered, Aliza Olmert told "Frontline." "We just fell in love. As simple as that. A boy meets a girl, a girl meets a boy, and that's the whole story. You don't talk ideology on those very special moments."
The children embraced their mother's beliefs, but the family found a gentle balance.
"There is a complex, and I think fascinating dialogue between my children and me. There are a lot of disagreements and anger, but also a lot of mutual respect," Olmert told Yediot Ahronot, an Israeli daily.
Olmert's nationalistic policies - especially during his contentious 10 years as mayor of Jerusalem - took their toll on relations with several leftist friends. But all the Olmerts say the differences have never harmed family harmony. If nothing else, they always backed the same soccer team, son Shaul says.
Shaul's signature on a petition against soldiering in the West Bank and Gaza was a radical step, well beyond the national consensus that holds military service as a sacred national duty. But he said his father, while disagreeing with his views, was not angry. "He mainly felt guilty that I was put in the spotlight and in a situation that I didn't want, just because I am his son."
Olmert told PBS: "We really live in a very open environment in the family, where everyone is entitled to have his own position, and that's fine with us. I never questioned their right to be wrong."
But until recently, it was Olmert who was isolated politically in his own home. On the eve of last Tuesday's election, he said this was the first time his family might actually vote for him.
"I always admired the tolerance of my family. They tolerated my dissension for the family consensus," he told "Frontline." "They never got rid of me in spite of my different positions."
Moshe Amirav, a childhood friend, said Olmert's shift to centrist politics showed an adaptability that would serve him well as a leader, facing the rise of the Islamic Hamas movement to power in the West Bank and Gaza.
"He has a very open approach," Amirav said. "He can see things from the other side. If he can see things through the eyes of his wife, he can also see things through the eyes of Hamas."
AP contributed to this report.
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