Is Ehud Olmert Feeling Lucky?

It’s just past 11 on a brilliant Jerusalem morning, and Ehud Olmert is sitting down for breakfast. Olmert lives on a serene block in the city’s German Colony, in an airy three-story town house decorated with canvases painted by his wife Aliza. As Olmert serves cucumber salad and Aliza offers to make omelettes–to go with the smoked salmon, roasted vegetables, olives and cheese–it’s easy to forget that the couple across the table is the most powerful in Israel. Easy, that is, until you spot the six-person security detail posted outside the front door. And until Olmert starts talking. “A friend who has known me for 25 years told me that I look so well prepared for the job that it’s unbelievable–as if I’ve prepared for it all my life,” Olmert says, slathering eggplant on a piece of pita bread. “And in a way he’s right. I know some of the professional experts had other forecasts. But I knew that one day I would become Prime Minister.”

Olmert is not a humble man. In a country where leaders typically make their mark on the battlefield, Olmert has distinguished himself more by relentless self-assurance and urbane tastes, which run from Cuban cigars to effulgent designer ties. At 60, he has spent his life in the public eye, first emerging as a young corruption fighter in the Israeli parliament and later serving as mayor of Jerusalem. In 2003, he was appointed Deputy Prime Minister under Ariel Sharon, but few Israelis thought Olmert had much chance to succeed his boss, given Olmert’s image as a remote, high-living élitist. As recently as March 2005, just 13% of Israelis in a poll wanted Olmert for their leader. But his prospects began to turn last fall, when Sharon deserted the right-wing Likud Party to form the centrist Kadima. Six weeks later, a stroke put Sharon in a coma, leaving Olmert to take over as acting government head and party leader. In last month’s general election, Kadima won more seats in parliament than any other party, cementing Olmert’s claim as Prime Minister–and capping a run of political fortune that has left counterparts numb with disbelief and possibly jealousy. “Winning the lottery is easier to contemplate than Ehud ever becoming Prime Minister,” says Yossi Sarid, formerly of the left-wing Meretz Party, who has known Olmert for 30 years. “But being lucky is very important. And to be Prime Minister of Israel, you need a little luck.”

Olmert needs all the luck he can get. His biggest challenge will be to sustain support for a campaign promise that involves evacuating thousands of Israeli settlers from the West Bank, completing a wall to separate Israel from the Palestinians and establishing new borders–all within four years. Olmert’s team calls the idea “convergence”: it would amount to the first large-scale uprooting of Israeli citizens from the West Bank since the territory was captured in 1967. Olmert told TIME that he expects the post-convergence map to be “very close to what may be the final borderlines” between Israel and the Palestinians–a notion that outrages Palestinians, since Olmert also says he intends to hold on to the largest Israeli settlements in the West Bank. And the plan could spark further ugly confrontations between the government and settlers. All that turmoil would test the fortitude of an experienced, popular leader like Sharon–let alone a man who, according to a pre-election poll, only 1 in 8 Israelis say they would like to have over for dinner. But those who know Olmert say such opposition only fuels his determination. “Even if it gets tough, he’ll keep going,” says a former adviser. “He’s committed, and he believes in his plan. And I think he believes he can deliver exactly what he has said.”

In a two-hour interview last week, Olmert betrayed little uncertainty about the job ahead. “I’ve been working 33 years to reach this minute,” he says. “I am where I’m supposed to be.” Olmert is rangy and barrel-chested, with a long, sallow countenance that makes him look as if he is in a constant state of mourning. In person, he exudes a relaxed, backslapping warmth, but even those close to him say he can get prickly. “He always has to have the last word,” says Etti Livni, a former Knesset member and close friend. Says Aliza: “He’s a hunter. It’s hard to win an argument with him. But how many times can you lose an argument and still be Prime Minister?”

Unlike Sharon, who would conduct freewheeling gabfests with his aides without ever settling on a course of action, Olmert insists on reaching decisions at the end of each meeting. His stamina is honed by daily six-mile runs; someone who has advised both men says that “by 5 a.m. Olmert knows everything, because he has read all the papers on the Internet. I don’t think Sharon knew how to turn on a computer.” But Olmert shares Sharon’s preoccupation with the survival of the Jewish state and an abiding skepticism in the Palestinians’ willingness to accept that. “He mistrusts them,” says Livni. “I don’t think he’s optimistic about a dialogue that will lead to an end to the conflict.”

Olmert is a scion of the Israeli right, which long subscribed to the vision of creating “Eretz Ysrael,” extending from the Mediterranean Sea to the banks of the Jordan River. Olmert’s father served in the Knesset in the 1950s as a member of the Herut Party, a forerunner of the right-wing Likud. Ehud studied law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and was elected to the Knesset in 1973 as the youngest Likud member. Olmert launched crusades against corruption in professional soccer and, later, against organized crime. Israelis credit Olmert’s generation with bringing transparency to the clubby, Old World atmosphere of Israeli politics. “We changed the rules of play,” says Sarid.

But rather than continuing to fight the system, Olmert joined it. In 1977 he opened a private law firm, using his influence to attract wealthy clients. The law practice made him rich–“I don’t hate the good life,” Olmert says–but his ties to the business community landed him in the middle of numerous scandals, including a case stemming from the 1988 election campaign in which he was accused of conspiring with other Likud officials to skirt campaign-finance restrictions. Though he was acquitted in 1997, Olmert gained a reputation for cynicism. As Jerusalem mayor, he initiated improvements such as a light-rail system but ran up huge deficits and bequeathed the city a legacy of half-finished development projects. In 1996, he pushed for the opening of a tunnel beneath the contested Temple Mount, a move that sparked clashes between police and Palestinians that left 80 dead.

The violence was a harbinger of the second Palestinian intifadeh, during which Jerusalem withstood a regular onslaught of suicide bombings. “I’ve seen more attacks and more blood than any political leader anyplace,” Olmert says. “There were attacks in almost every corner of the city. I’ve met with dozens of victims. It’s something that comes back to me time and time again.” Olmert says the experience “re-emphasized the need for separation” from the Palestinians.

That meant throwing support behind the idea of evacuating settlements in the occupied territories, a position long championed by Israeli doves, including Aliza Olmert. She says she voted for her husband’s party for the first time last month. “The situation made right-wingers like Ehud realize that sooner or later we had to negotiate, or in the worst case act unilaterally,” says Aliza. “And the experience of living with someone like me, with a lefty-oriented position, can be powerful.” When Olmert steps away from the table, Aliza says Ehud’s frequent absence from home made their five children gravitate toward her views–a claim that Olmert doesn’t dispute. “This is an open house,” he says. “There wasn’t one dominant voice heard here.”

In 2003, at Sharon’s prodding, Olmert agreed to run again for the Knesset. Though Olmert was only 34th on the Likud’s list of candidates, a reflection of his weakness in the party, Sharon made him Deputy Prime Minister. In that role Olmert acted as Sharon’s foil, floating trial balloons before Sharon signed on to them–the most notable being the plan to evacuate settlers from the Gaza Strip last year, an idea first proposed by Olmert in a newspaper interview in 2003. But despite Olmert’s loyalty, friends say, he never felt accepted by the Israeli leader. Sharon excluded Olmert from high-level meetings at his ranch in the Negev desert; a close ally of Olmert’s who asked not to be named says Olmert even talked of quitting the government. Olmert calls Sharon “a hero,” but he has stopped paying visits to Sharon in the hospital. “I want to remember him the way he really was, not as an 80-year-old man, lying in bed helpless and unconscious.”

Olmert’s desire to step out of his predecessor’s shadow may have influenced his campaign pledge to initiate a withdrawal from parts of the West Bank by 2010. After the relative success of the Gaza pullout and the rise to power of Hamas in the Palestinian territories, many Israelis have abandoned faith in peace negotiations with the Palestinians in favor of unilateral moves. But withdrawing from the West Bank, which is home to 230,000 settlers, may prove more wrenching than it was in Gaza. “Sharon never meant to go as far as Olmert is proposing,” says Natan Sharansky, a former Cabinet member who left Sharon’s government to protest the Gaza pullout. “But this is Olmert’s unique chance to prove his leadership.”

It won’t be the only one. The Hamas-run Palestinian government said last week it will be unable to pay the salaries of 140,000 Palestinians this month without an immediate infusion of aid. Olmert has refused to turn over $50 million in tax revenues Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinians and has ruled out negotiations with the government unless Hamas renounces terrorism and recognizes Israel. But the prospect of a humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian territories may force Israel to soften its position on Hamas. Olmert told TIME he is meeting with aides “to see what we can do” to assist the Palestinians through nongovernmental organizations without giving money to Hamas. And Olmert might still face U.S. resistance to his plan to evacuate some West Bank settlements if it looks as if he is trying to retain bigger ones and draw Israel’s final borders in the process–which Palestinian leaders such as President Mahmoud Abbas say would leave a future Palestinian state in pieces. “He and the President need to sit down, and we need to understand what his vision is,” says a senior Administration official. “At that point, we’ll be able to make judgments about what that means for us.”

And what will it mean for Israel? As Aliza clears the food, Olmert outlines his ambition to find an end to the long struggle with the Palestinians–even if that means, after years of failed negotiations, that Israel ends the struggle on its own. The goal “is to come to a point where we are back where we belong, we have secured our existence, and it’s time for us to be like other countries, living in peace,” he says. “If God wanted me to be here, he wanted me to be here for this.” With that, Olmert gets up from the table and goes back to work.

To read more of the interview with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, go to time.com