Diplomacy: Olmert's 9/11 Moment

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert met his 9/11 moment this week. Just as the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US defined the presidency of George W. Bush, so this week's events will go a long way toward shaping Olmert's premiership.

Leaders are measured largely by how they deal with crisis, and the decisions Olmert made this week, and will make in the coming days, will go far toward framing his tenure, and perhaps even determining its length.

Granted, the capture of one soldier and the gruesome execution of a teenager is not exactly the same as the flooring of World Trade Center, but it will give the country, its enemies and the world a good sense of Olmert's leadership capabilities. This is the type of event that tests a leader's mettle.

Both 9/11 and the Kerem Shalom attack hit early in the terms of both the American and the Israeli leader: Bush was in office for just 234 days when the US was attacked; Olmert will mark 100 days as prime minister next Thursday (he became acting prime minister 82 days earlier, on January 5, after Sharon suffered his stroke).

For Bush, the terrorist outrages in New York, Washington and in the Pennsylvania skies completely altered and redefined his agenda. A similar fate may await Olmert - depending both on how he manages this crisis, and its outcome.

Olmert has made the withdrawal from the West Bank into settlement blocs - his realignment plan - the centerpiece of his agenda. He has essentially taken the model of disengagement from Gaza and transferred it onto the West Bank, albeit with some adjustments and a different name.

Yet the fate of this plan, and his ability to convince the country of its wisdom, will in no small measure be impacted by how he manages the current crisis.

Various polls over the last three weeks have put opposition to the plan at 50 percent (a Hebrew University poll), 56% (a Ha'aretz poll) and 70% (a poll commissioned by Israel Beiteinu). And these polls were conducted before Gilad Shalit was kidnapped and Eliahu Asheri was killed.

In order to gain the public's support he needs to carry out realignment, Olmert will have to flatten what Ha'aretz writer Ari Shavit once referred to as a "blood curve" - a paradoxical situation over the last 20 years where Israeli concessions, or hints of concessions, did not lead to a decline in terrorism, but rather to its increase.