It’s as if the scene of betrayal were taken from Shakespeare’s “King Lear.” In this final act, the woman closest to the king stands up and cooperates with the enemies of the king to hasten his demise. Shula Zaken, the woman closest to former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, might, in the next few days, deliver the incriminating testimony against him that could send him to prison.
For many years, Olmert’s trials have proceeded without a conviction. Now, in the final stretch of his last trial — the Holyland Park case — Olmert is in real danger from the person closest to him. Just when he started to feel that he was about to escape the wrath of the law unscathed, Zaken dropped a bomb that shook the Israeli legal system and the Israeli public. She put a tempting deal for an exchange on the table: Lighten my punishment, and in exchange I’ll give you Olmert’s head.
Who would have imagined such a dramatic end to the most intimate relationship Israeli politics has known? When she was not yet 15, Zaken first met Olmert, who was then a young lawyer who already had his sights far into the political field. From the first moment, Olmert noticed the shy Jerusalem girl who grew up in a poor, uneducated household, without means. He was determined to turn her into his associate. She was determined to serve him, because she saw him as a special and uniquely significant man whose powerful political ambition might lead him, when the time came, to stand at the head of the state.
When Olmert was elected to the Knesset, Zaken marched after him like his shadow, and conducted all his personal and political business. In his first Knesset term, he made his mark and became one of the prominent members of Knesset in the Likud movement. His colleagues in the party watched the forward charge of the young and ambitious politician with wonder. A consensus prevailed among them that his political success was owed, not to a small degree, to the skills of the short woman walking beside him. The two were almost never seen apart. They were always seen side by side, with her carrying a thick document file in her hands.
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