Portside

In a recent op-ed in Haaretz, former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right ministers of knowingly steering Israel into an all-out war.

During a wide-ranging conversation on this week's Haaretz Podcast, Olmert tells host Allison Kaplan Sommer that for Ben-Gvir, Smotrich and Netanyahu, Gaza is only the beginning - they are aiming for "Armageddon, that will make it possible to expel many of the Palestinians in the West Bank."

He mentions the government minister's backing of violent groups of settlers, who are beating Palestinians and looting their homes, and goes as far as saying, "A great majority of Palestinians killed in the West Bank [since October 7] were killed not necessarily for good reasons, and not by qualified Israeli security forces, but by volunteers - such as the hilltop youth."

Olmert, who a year and a half ago lost a defamation suit filed against him by the Netanyahu family for asserting they were mentally ill, doesn't seem deterred from using strong language to describe the prime minister, whose behavior, he says, points to "a nervous breakdown."

"A nervous breakdown is the only way to interpret the way he behaves," he says on the podcast. "I don't know that he suffered a nervous breakdown - I don't have any medical evidence to prove this," says Olmert, "but I have brains. I have eyes. I understand what I see. And what I see is the behavior of someone who has gone through a dramatic nervous breakdown. And most likely, he still hasn't recovered from it."

According to Olmert, the current government is interested in continuing the conflict and avoiding a long-term cease-fire, and for that reason, it is delaying a hostage deal. Olmert strongly supports a deal, even at the cost of painful concessions.

Asked why he supports a deal - given the fact that while he was Prime Minister, he refused to exchange Hamas prisoners for the release of Gilad Shalit, Olmert says civilian hostages are not the same as soldiers. "When it comes to soldiers in the security forces, under certain circumstances, when the need arises, we have the right to send them to fight, even at the risk of them not coming back," he says, "but the hostages that were abducted and are now waiting more than 142 days … are not soldiers. They are Israeli citizens ... and we, the state of Israel, deserted them. We were not there to defend them, and we have no right now to desert them - not to make every possible effort at any cost to bring them back."

"Nothing would have happened on October 7," Olmert says, if a different government with different priorities was in charge. "The failure starts with the overconfidence spread by the prime minister," that his "sophisticated manipulations" deterred Hamas.

"5,000 Palestinian terrorists shook the foundations of the state of Israel because of the overconfidence and arrogance," he concludes