Israel’s Olmert disengages from “disengagement”
Still days away from his likely election as Israel’s next prime minister, Ehud Olmert is already putting a personal spin on Middle East rhetoric. A leading advocate of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s bid to “disengage” from fighting with the Palestinians by quitting the Gaza Strip last year, Olmert has enlisted a distinctively different term for his vision of similar moves in the West Bank. “It would be accurate to call what I am pursuing a ‘hitkansut’,” Olmert, interim premier since the now-comatose Sharon suffered a stroke in January, told Army Radio on Monday, using the Hebrew for “consolidation” or “ingathering”. Full Story