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Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert Diagnosed With Prostate Cancer

October 30, 2007

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced today that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer requiring surgery in the coming months but vowed to stay in office, confident of a full recovery.

“Following the results of a regular check-up, I was diagnosed with initial signs of prostate cancer,” the 62-year-old prime minister told a hastily convened news conference in Jerusalem.

“According to my doctors, this is a microscopic growth without metastasis that is removable through short surgical treatment. According to the medical assessment there will be no need for chemotherapy or radiation,” he said.

Olmert, 62, who has always prided himself on his good health and is a renowned sports fanatic, said the surgery was scheduled for the coming months as his doctors rushed to reassure the public that his condition was curable.

“I will be able to fully carry out my duties before the treatment and several hours after it,” he said. “My doctors told me there is a full chance for a complete recovery.”

The shock announcement comes with Israel and the Palestinians preparing for a Middle East conference in the United States later this year that the international community hopes will revive full-blown peace talks.

Olmert last met Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Friday and pledged to work towards a rapid and meaningful agreement for the conference despite chronic disagreements that have hampered progress to date.

Professor Kobi Ramon, Olmert’s personal physician, told the news conference that the tumour had been discovered at an early stage and was fully curable.

“The tumour was discovered when the prime minister was in perfect health and without any symptoms,” he said.

“The treatment may have side effects, but they will not limit his duties as prime minister,” he added.

Olmert’s spokesman Jacob Galanti told reporters that Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who is currently on a three-day official visit to China, had earlier been informed of the prime minister’s condition.

Her office said that she will not be cutting short her visit, however. Livni is the official number two in Olmert’s cabinet and would ordinarily take over temporarily in the event of his incapacitation.

Olmert first took office in January 2006 after his predecessor Ariel Sharon suffered a debilitating stroke that ended his public career before going on to win a general election victory at the helm of the centre-right Kadima party.

During his 21 months in office he has come under immense pressure and suffered abysmal approval ratings stemming from last year’s war in Lebanon and a string of corruption and sex scandals implicating him and his government.

He has kept up a punishing schedule of meetings and foreign tours. Last week he was in Britain and France after a fleeting visit to Russia as part of a campaign to encourage the United Nations (UN) Security Council to impose tougher sanctions on Iran.

His cancer announcement comes eight days after Israel unveiled an apparent plot to kill Olmert in the occupied West Bank.

The Palestinians charged that releasing the news was intended to dim expectations for the US meeting.

The prime minister, considered one of Israel’s most accomplished politicians and a lawyer by profession, was born in 1945 in the central village of Shoni.

In 1973, he became the youngest member of parliament, running for the right-wing Likud party.

He later opposed both the 1978 Camp David accords with Egypt and the 1993 Oslo agreement with the Palestinians.

After entering the cabinet in 1988, Olmert was elected mayor of Jerusalem in 1993, a post he held for a decade but in which he never really shone.

In 2003, he returned to government as deputy premier under Sharon who handpicked him as his successor.

Steeped in the ideology of a Greater Israel in all historic Palestine, he underwent a late-career conversion, coming to believe Israel had to withdraw from Palestinian territory if it were to remain a democratic Jewish state.

He joined the centrist Kadima party founded by Sharon shortly before his stroke and is married to left-leaning artist Aliza, who brought up their four children with equally liberal views.

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