Ehud Olmert: This war must end now
The Interview
BBC
4.3 • 537 Ratings
🗓️ 22 January 2025
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Stephen Sackur speaks to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. He is a fierce critic of current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and says only territorial compromise can save Israel from a grim future. But is his simply a voice in the political wilderness?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Hard Talk from the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker. My guest in this interview |
| 0:06.6 | recorded on the 21st of January is a former Prime Minister of Israel who experienced a spectacular |
| 0:13.6 | fall from grace and who now voices political opinions which put him deeply at odds with the current Israeli government. |
| 0:22.6 | Ehud Olmert used to be a stalwart of the right-wing Likud Party, but his politics began to change |
| 0:28.8 | during his 10 years as mayor of Jerusalem, when he became convinced that it was not in |
| 0:35.0 | Israel's interest to forever control the lives of Palestinians living on land |
| 0:40.6 | conquered by Israel in the war of 1967. After he became Prime Minister in 2006, Olmert tried to broker |
| 0:49.3 | a land for peace deal with the Palestinian Authority led led by Mahmoud Abbas. |
| 1:00.5 | But his premiership collapsed amid a welter of corruption allegations before any agreement could be reached. Since then, he's been an ardent advocate for a two-state solution. But after Hamas's |
| 1:06.7 | assault on southern Israel, which killed 1,200 people on October the 7th, 2023, and the overwhelming |
| 1:13.3 | Israeli military response in Gaza, Almuts has seemed like a voice in the wilderness. Now, though, |
| 1:20.6 | a fragile ceasefire is in place, and the new U.S. President Donald Trump appears to have an |
| 1:26.1 | ambition to play the role of historic peacemaker. |
| 1:29.6 | So is there any reason to believe that the Olmert vision could yet be revived? |
| 1:36.1 | Well, he joins me now on the line from Tel Aviv. Welcome to Hard Talk. |
| 1:41.2 | Hi. |
| 1:42.1 | Hi. Mr. Olmert, does it seem to you that this fragile, complex ceasefire deal in Gaza is actually an end to the war or just a pause? |
| 1:53.6 | I think the agreement is obviously a partial agreement and limited in time and in the number of hostages that are going to be released. |
| 2:02.0 | So the question is, what is the next step? |
| 2:04.9 | We in Israel would have liked it to have been on the first place a comprehensive deal with the end of the war and the return of all the hostages. |
| 2:15.0 | Prime Minister Netanyahu waited almost eight months since May until he finally |
| 2:19.8 | agreed, perhaps as a result of the pressure of the new president of America, but at this point, |
... |
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