Sources close to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Tuesday that the allegations which implicated Olmert in the newest suspicions against him were politically motivated. According to Channel 10's political correspondent, the sources said that the people who leveled the allegations against Olmert thought that he was leaning too far to the left in his current negotiations with the PA. Channel 2's political analyst Amnon Abramovich made similar hints Monday night.

Israeli media is bound by a gag order suppressing virtually all information regarding the case, but both Channel 2 and Channel 10 mentioned the New York Post to their viewers as a news outlet which had published the allegations against Olmert.  

Channel 10's legal affairs correspondent said that after speaking to sources in the Justice Ministry he found "there is no dispute over the facts" in the case. "There will be a charge sheet," he said, "but it still isn't clear whether it will include serious offenses or lighter ones." The political correspondent, Raviv Drucker, agreed and said that the question was how to interpret the facts.

'Just like Barak'
Drucker added that Olmert had been speaking with senior Labor officials and had told them that he
Olmert had been speaking with senior Labor officials and had told them that he intended to fight and not resign.
intended to fight and not resign. Olmert, he said, was determined to convince the Labor officials that what had happened to him was no different from what happened with former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who was investigated for illegally using NGO's to fund his successful campaign to be elected Prime Minister in 1999.

Olmert, said the correspondent, does not want to leave office and sees nothing wrong with continuing to serve as Prime Minister despite the ongoing investigations against him. In this matter he compared his situation to that of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who continued to serve as Prime Minister despite the investigation against him in the so-called "Greek Island" affair, and to Barak who continued to serve despite the allegations against him regarding the NGO's.

The comparison to Sharon's Greek Island affair could be seen by right-wingers as a worrisome one because it was the pressure from that probe which allegedly pushed Sharon into carrying out the "Disengagement:" the destruction of Jewish communities in Gaza and the eviction of all Jews from Gaza.

In a book he co-authored after the Disengagement, Drucker alleged that Sharon's circle of advisors decided to press ahead with the Disengagement in order to please the leftist establishment and avoid prosecution for the Greek Island affair. Abramovich supported the idea of "going easy" on Sharon at the time and famously used the expression "guard him like an etrog."