FOR days Ehud Olmert, the acting Prime Minister of Israel, has been trying to assure the country that Ariel Sharon would emerge from a routine heart operation fit enough to fight a general election and lead the country for another term in office.

Yesterday when he convened an emergency Cabinet meeting, with Mr Sharon’s chair empty at his side, the grim look on the face of Israel’s caretaker leader spoke volumes.

After two years of loyal service as Mr Sharon’s deputy and ideological soulmate, Mr Olmert has been thrust into an impossible position that will test to the limits his abilities as a leader and politician.

If he succeeds he will accomplish one of the greatest feats in modern Israeli politics and fulfil his long-held ambition to become Prime Minister, but if he fails his career may be finished.

To his advantage, the balding 60-year-old is a hardened politician with more than 30 years’ experience in the bruising world of Israeli parliamentary politics. He first joined the Knesset in 1973 and went on to serve various right-wing governments in senior ministerial posts. For a decade he was Mayor of Jerusalem, a demanding job requiring the ability to navigate through the holy city’s capricious world of religious and ethnic rivalries.

During this period he earned himself the reputation as a “Teflon politician”, who enjoyed the media spotlight and was able to zigzag from Left to Right, depending on the public mood. But those experiences will not adequately have prepared him for the task he now faces. With his ageing leader lying comatose in Hadassah Hospital, Mr Olmert has three hurdles to face in quick succession.

First, he must fight a leadership battle in the newly created Kadima party, which was launched just two months ago by Mr Sharon as a one-man political movement. Then he has to draw up a convincing party election list, with some members already considering abandoning him. Finally, he must take on and beat the two established parties that have dominated Israeli politics for decades, including his former Likud party, now headed by his old rival, Binyamin Netanyahu. Mr Olmert has some qualities that will help him to fight the battles ahead. He ran the successful Likud election campaign in 2003, although his own Kadima movement has no infrastructure. He is well connected both in Israel and abroad and is a lively debater.

Above all, he believes deeply in Mr Sharon’s ideology that peace and security can be achieved with the Palestinians only through unilateral concessions by Israel.

Two years ago he caused a furore when he turned his back on a lifetime of right-wing ideology and told the country’s bestselling newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth that Israel would have to make territorial concessions to the Palestinians if it wanted to survive.

He strongly supported the withdrawal from Gaza last year and favours further removals of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. While that puts him firmly in the centre of Israeli politics, convincing the electorate that he can be trusted with such a delicate task will be a much tougher job.

Israelis tend to vote for leaders that they can trust with the country’s security. Mr Sharon, a general turned politician, followed a long tradition set by Ehud Barak, Yitzhak Rabin and Moshe Dayan.

Mr Olmert did serve as a junior officer in an elite Israeli infantry unit but otherwise has little experience in security matters. When he goes into the battle of his life, he will badly miss the Bulldozer, as Mr Sharon is known, at his side.

EHUD OLMERT

1945 Born in Binyamina, Israel

1973 Elected to Knesset

1988 Appointed minister in Cabinet of Yitzhak Shamir

1990 Promoted to Health Minister

1993 Elected Mayor of Jerusalem

1999 Unsuccessfully challenges Ariel Sharon for Likud leadership

2003 Appointed Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Industry, Trade and Labour. Suggests unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and West Bank

2005 Resigns from Likud and joins Kadima with Sharon. Appointed Minister of Finance

2006 Appointed caretaker Prime Minister after Sharon suffers a stroke

IN THE SUCCESSOR’S IN-TRAY

• Security of Israeli citizens against attacks by Palestinians has always dominated the political agenda. It remains central in voters’ minds
• Completion of the West Bank security fence designed to thwart suicide bombers is high on the list. With only one third of the 450 miles completed, it is well behind schedule and even Labour is committed to finishing it
• Tackling growing poverty has joined security on the agenda with the entry into the race to head the rejuvenated Labour Party of Amir Peretz, a trade unionist. Leaders in Likud and Kadima were forced to pay lip-service to the issue
• Dismantling Jewish settlements in the West Bank is a pledge that Ariel Sharon has yet to honour. But the next leader will come under even greater US pressure to do so
• Higher education funding has come to the attention of voters after Labour pledged an Australian-style graduate loans scheme

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