Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, left, and Vice-Premier Ehud Olmert attend a ceremony at the prime minister's office in Jerusalem on Wednesday, Jan. 4, 2006. At the time, Sharon was expected to briefly hand over power to Olmert during a medical procedure to seal a small hole in his heart. Hours later, Sharon suffered a major stroke. (Eliana Aponte/Associated Press)

Four months ago Ehud Olmert won his first general election, largely on the promise of withdrawing Jewish settlements from disputed lands in Gaza and parts of the West Bank and consolidating Israel's borders behind its imposing steel and concrete security barrier.

That was then. Now, in the space of two short weeks, Israel's new prime minister finds himself heading a government that is back to fighting a war in two territories it had previously abandoned, Gaza and southern Lebanon. In the past both proved to be political and military quagmires that sapped Israel's strength for long periods and undermined its standing in the international community.

In this case, there is little doubt Israel was provoked into action. On June 25, Hamas militants tunnelled under the Gaza border into Israel, killed two Israeli soldiers at a border post and took a third, Cpl. Gilad Shalit, hostage. They later offered to trade him for some of the estimated 9,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails.

Then, on July 12, Hezbollah militia in southern Lebanon crossed into Israel and attacked a military convoy, killing seven soldiers and taking two others, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regey, hostage. They, too, are being held in trade for Lebanese militants in Israeli jails.

Both actions, direct violations of a country's borders, were egregious breaches of international law, and Israel promptly declared them akin to a declaration of war and responded with punishing ferocity.

In Gaza, Israeli planes and tanks destroyed roads, bridges and power supplies, while its soldiers arrested a number (some say a third) of Hamas legislators and attacked a series of suspected safe houses.

In Lebanon, Beirut's harbour was sealed by Israeli gunships, and the runways at the airport and the main roads out of town were blown up, allowing Israeli troops to tighten their noose on the southern suburbs of Beirut where Hezbollah is said to enjoy the most support.

World opinion divided

The boldness of the Israeli attack can be seen as part of its long-held policy of punishing retribution. Nonetheless it appears to have strongly divided the international community. The U.S. supports Israel's actions, as does Canada's Conservative government, though Washington is fretting about the destabilization of Lebanon's fragile democracy, newly emerged from Syrian control.

The European Union, on the other hand, denounced Israel's "disproportionate" use of force and the UN has set up a fact-finding and mediation team. Meeting in Russia for their annual summit, the G8 leaders issued a statement blaming the extremist Arab groups for the conflict, while calling on Israel to halt its military incursions into Gaza and Lebanon.

By most estimates, at least 80 Palestinians were killed in the two weeks of Gaza assaults, and at least twice that number died in the first five days of fighting in Lebanon.

Israel's harsh response has raised questions within the country and elsewhere as to whether this is a strategic blunder by the new Olmert government or a calculated risk to take out its Hamas foes, as well as Hezbollah, which has been amassing new Iranian-supplied rockets near Israel's northern border. (Two Israelis were killed and more than 40 wounded in Hezbollah rocket attacks on the town of Dweir. Eight Israeli workers were killed in a rocket attack on the northern city of Haifa.)

For months now, since the surprise election in January that enabled it to control the Palestinian legislature, Hamas has been under huge pressure from Israel and most of the international community (including Canada) to moderate its extreme views regarding Israel, return to peace talks and recognize the Jewish state.

Not much has happened on that front. But after the Israeli pullout from Gaza, a consensus appears to have emerged among ordinary Palestinians that Israel must release at least some of the many Arab prisoners it holds, according to news reports from the region. That same sentiment among Lebanese families who wanted their loved ones back may also be what pushed Hezbollah into action (though more cynical motives cannot be discounted).

If that's the case, there may have been huge miscalculations on all sides. After Hamas militants captured Cpl. Shalit, Olmert took a hard line and refused to entertain any kind of negotiation or trade. This even though Israel has negotiated prisoner releases in the past, and even though Hamas seemed to be trying to make this notion politically palatable by asking first for the release of women and boys under 18.

But if Olmert was having second thoughts about negotiating, that option was probably foreclosed after Hezbollah struck. Having taken a hard line with Hamas over what might have been a containable incident in Gaza, Olmert was probably forced to do no less when Hezbollah broadened the conflict considerably.

Who is Ehud Olmert?

Not well known outside Israel, the 60-year-old Olmert is a lifelong politician who was first elected to the Knesset at 28. He officially became prime minister in April but had been the acting PM since January when his mentor Ariel Sharon, one of the giants of Israeli politics, suffered a massive stroke and was incapacitated.

Olmert, though, is no Sharon, the former general whose legend was larger than life on both sides of the Israeli-Arab divide. Olmert's political career has been spent more on the domestic side of Jewish politics. A lawyer, he is a former finance minister and minister of trade and development. He spent two terms (1993-2003) as mayor of Jerusalem, concentrating on development and transit issues.

His military training, especially when compared with almost every other Israeli leader, has been brief. He was injured during his compulsory military service and released early. He completed his military duties as a journalist for the armed forces magazine and was a military correspondent during the Yom Kippur War in 1973.

Politically, he did an about-face, like Sharon, and went from refusing to give up Jewish settlements in certain occupied territories to withdrawing from them in the pursuit of land for peace. But perhaps because he did not have Sharon's stature as a military tough-guy, he felt he couldn't afford to negotiate with hostage takers, especially this early in his regime.

Just two years ago, Sharon authorized the release of 420 Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners in exchange for a captured Israeli businessman and the bodies of three soldiers who had been killed much earlier.

Peace activists have encouraged Olmert to make a similar deal now, noting that the previous exchange did not appear to harm Sharon's electoral chances. But that earlier transaction reverberated, often harshly, through the Israeli media for months, especially when it turned out the businessman had been in Dubai to discuss a drug deal, which he later admitted to in a plea bargain in an Israeli court.

Tightening the noose

Militarily, the Israeli actions in Gaza and Lebanon seem to be similarly designed. In both cases, air and artillery attacks were first unleashed to cut transportation routes and cordon off key areas so the Israeli hostages could not be moved out of the region. The army is now moving in to tighten the noose.

The problem with this kind of manoeuvre is the civilians killed in bombardments or cut off from supplies, water especially in the case of Gaza, in the heat of summer.

Israel at this point seems determined to prevent its captured soldiers from being whisked out of the country to either Syria or Iran, where the potential exists for a much broader international incident that might drag in the U.S.

Even French President Jacques Chirac, who strongly criticized Israel's foray into Lebanon, musing whether it was designed to destroy the Lebanese regime, seemed to imply that Syria and Iran, which both back Hezbollah, were behind the hostage taking.

"I have the feeling, if not the conviction, that Hamas and Hezbollah wouldn't have taken the initiatives alone," Chirac told the Associated Press.

Meanwhile, Jan Egeland, the top U.N. humanitarian official, said the Israeli blockade of Lebanon's borders and seaports meant civilians and children "cannot get their daily needs met." He was also sharply critical of Hezbollah and Hamas but called Israel's military reaction excessive.

"It is in violation of international law, and it is also in violation of common sense," he said at the UN's European headquarters in Geneva. "You are supposed to do something to the armed group. You are not supposed to hurt the children of people who have nothing to do with this."

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