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Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Monday that he has prostate cancer and will soon have surgery. Normally Stratfor does not much care about the fate of a leader, and under most circumstances Olmert would simply be another person in this category. But Israeli politics are fickle, and this case is different.
Olmert is a weak, discredited leader. In the summer of 2006 he led Israel without sufficient preparation into a conflict with Hezbollah which, to put it bluntly, he lost. Political restrictions on operations stemming from a fear of casualties resulted in the first-ever defeat of the Israeli army in war since Israel’s creation in 1948. Since then his leadership has fallen far short of inspiring, and even his efforts to carry out the revolutionary plans of his onetime mentor, Ariel Sharon, have largely fallen by the wayside.
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