Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered a strong rebuke of President Trump’s foreign policy, saying his policies amounted to “more rhetoric than action” and threaten to destabilize parts of the world.
Speaking to Yahoo Finance, Olmert said a Joe Biden administration would create “a much greater balance in the appearance of the American position towards the Middle East.”
“It would be unfair to blame President Trump for more than he deserves. But I think that sometimes the style of President Trump is more damaging than the substance of his policy,” Olmert said, speaking on the sidelines of the Horasis Extraordinary Meeting. “At the beginning we thought that he was going to attack North Korea and that was going to upset the entire balance in the Far East. At the end it was more rhetoric than action. The same is with Iran. The same is with Syria.”
Olmert’s comments come weeks after the Trump Administration brokered an agreement between Israel and two Arab nations, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Trump hailed the agreement as “the dawn of a new Middle East,” saying the so-called Abraham Accords would “serve as the foundation for a comprehensive peace across the entire region.”
While Israel has never been at war with either the UAE or Bahrain, the agreement marked the first recognition of Israel by an Arab state since 1994. Olmert acknowledged the deal marked a “very positive development” in the region, but said it came at the expense of a two-state solution for the Palestinians.
Earlier this year, the former prime minister traveled to the United Nations in New York to meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in an attempt to revive talks he began with the Palestinian leadership during his tenure, in defiance of the current government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“While it is dramatically important, and it's a game changer in many different aspects, it can't come in instead of an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. That has to be signed, that has to be negotiated. It’s incumbent upon Israel first and foremost to do this,” Olmert said. “There will never be peace between Israel and the Palestinians without the Palestinians having their own state. It's quite simple.”
Olmert, who served as Prime Minister between 2006 and 2009, has been a vocal critic of his successor, saying Netanyahu has put Israel in “reckless hands.” Olmert himself resigned in 2008, after he was convicted of accepting bribes and spent 16 months in prison. He was released in 2017.
A return to the Iran nuclear deal
While Olmert has largely refrained from weighing in on U.S. politics, the ex-premier said he supported Biden’s calls to return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, often referred to as the Iran nuclear deal, saying there was “no smoking gun presented by President Trump that the Iranians were violating the agreement.”
At the vice presidential debate Wednesday night, Senator Kamala Harris, D-Calif., reiterated Biden’s support for the deal, saying Trump’s withdrawal from the agreement and his “unilateral approach to foreign policy” has made America “less safe.”
“It wasn't an ideal agreement, but it has improved the ability to stop Iran from pursuing nuclear capacity,” Olmert said. “I think [Iran] is a major force supporting the upsetting of the balance in the Middle East, which is a danger. It is not the role of Israel to lead the battle against Iran, a nuclear Iran. This has to be done by America and other powerful nations. I think that President Obama did it. I regret the fact that President Trump wavered. The American support for the agreement and Joe Biden will decide to renew this agreement on the basis of what it was, or perhaps on an even better basis in terms of inspecting and monitoring the nuclear efforts of Iran. I don't see anything bad about it.”
On the issue of the U.S. presidential election, Olmert expressed disappointment in the direction of political discourse in America, particularly on the heels of the most recent presidential debate between Biden and Trump. The chaotic, 90-minute exchange in Ohio was encapsulated by the president’s refusal to disavow white supremacists and Biden telling him to “shut up” after repeated interruptions.
“This was not the most beautiful presentation of the American culture as we have known it in the past,” Olmert said. “America is a role model for so many people in so many parts of the world in many ways. So, to think that this is the way that political leaders can argue is bad, and this is now characteristic of the way that the political discourse is taking place in the State of Israel, which is another reason why I am unhappy.”
Akiko Fujita is an anchor and reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter @AkikoFujita
