Ehud Olmert

Ehud Olmert, a lawyer and longtime Likud Knesset member, was mayor of Jerusalem from 1993 to 2003 and a senior minister under Ariel Sharon, whom he followed into the new Kadima party. When Sharon suffered a massive stroke in January 2006, Olmert became acting prime minister, then led Kadima to victory in the March 2006 election. Months later came the Second Lebanon War, whose conduct the Winograd Commission sharply criticized. In September 2007 Israel destroyed a secret Syrian nuclear reactor at Deir ez-Zor, a strike it acknowledged only in 2018.

At the Annapolis conference of 2007 Olmert relaunched negotiations, and in 2008 he offered PLO chairman Mahmoud Abbas a far-reaching map giving up most of the West Bank with land swaps and international oversight of Jerusalem's Old City; no agreement was reached. Amid corruption investigations he announced his resignation in July 2008 and, after the Gaza operation Cast Lead, handed over to Benjamin Netanyahu in March 2009. Convicted of bribery, he served 16 months in prison in 2016–2017, the first former Israeli prime minister to be jailed.