Quite a drama is gathering to greet Prime Minister Olmert when he arrives in Washington.

He is scheduled next week to address both houses of Congress. It is not technically a Congressional Joint Session, because the Congress is in recess, but all the more dramatic. The new premier will enjoy the access of his predecessor, Ariel Sharon, to the president’s top advisers, but he will also have a hard task ahead of him, not least because, although he has full bona fides, he does not have the personal relationship with President Bush that was cemented with Ariel Sharon when Mr. Bush, then governor of Texas, took his famous helicopter tour of Israel and had the order of battle in the war against it explained by the greatest military strategist of his generation.

The Jewish state has been remarkably restrained in recent months. It has faced ever more brazen provocations by the Iranians, both in their quest for an atomic bomb and in their geopolitics, from Korea, to Indonesia, to Europe. While the official line of the Olmert government has been to accept the nuclear diplomacy wending slowly to the U.N. Security Council, the time is fast approaching when the Israelis will have little choice but to take matters into their own hands. The task of laying out the stakes of what it means if a regime whose very charter calls for the annihilation of the Jewish State obtains nuclear weapons has taken on an urgency.

Mr. Olmert will be able to thank the president and his secretary of state – and, we don’t mind saying, the Congress – for their efforts convincing the Europeans to isolate politically the Hamas regime in Gaza and the West Bank. He’ll also need to speak of the dangers as the Quartet considers how to provide the Palestinian Arabs humanitarian relief. We have seen this sort of thing before. Secretary Annan couldn’t have been less helpful by calling on Israel and Hamas to begin talks. On top of all this Mr. Olmert will be explaining the details of what he is calling his convergence plan, which the Israeli press is reporting could, if no peace process emerges, see the start of the dismantlement of remote settlements as early as December.

The Jewish community itself is divided on the point. Opponents to Mr. Olmert’s convergence plan are scheduling a rally in the capital. The Orthodox Union sent out a statement yesterday saying it is “inappropriate at this time, to hold a rally in Washington, DC to express differences with the democratically elected Prime Minister of Israel.” But Americans for a Safe Israel and other groups are sending out messages that they’re going ahead, concerned not only over the idea of a retreat in the face of Arab and Islamist aggression but also at the prospect, under any circumstances, that Mr. Olmert’s plan will lead to a division of the Israeli capital at Jerusalem.

This is a moment for both Messrs. Bush and Olmert to remember that previous prime ministers to address Congress vowed that Jerusalem would never be divided again. When Premier Netanyahu made that vow, he was met by a roaring ovation from both houses on both sides of the aisle. During Prime Minister Rabin’s last visit to Washington, he spoke in the Capitol Rotunda and thanked Congress for the Jerusalem Embassy Act, which makes American support for the capital of a Jewish state in an undivided Jerusalem a matter of American statute.

“We differ in our opinions, left and right. We disagree on means and objectives. In Israel, we all agree on one issue; the wholeness of Jerusalem, the continuation of its existence as capital of the state of Israel,” Mr. Rabin said. “There are no two Jerusalems. There is only one Jerusalem. For us, Jerusalem is not a subject to compromise, and there is no peace without Jerusalem. Jerusalem, which was destroyed eight times; well, for years we had no access to the remnants of our temple; was ours, is ours, and will be ours forever.” We do not wish to see the battle of Jerusalem fought in the halls of Congress. But political leaders, American or Israeli, will be playing a dangerous possible game if they go up the Hill to give any quarter on that issue.

Mr. Olmert’s predecessor, Mr. Sharon, spoke of straightening Israel’s lines in the absense of a negotiating partner. There has always been the possibility that the straightened lines could become permanent lines, but Mr. Olmert appears to be moving further in that direction than Mr. Sharon did. American Jewish leaders who raced to Israel a week or so ago to caution Mr. Olmert about asking for $10 billion in American funding to underwrite this retreat have been told, since then, that there is not going to be a request for large amounts of additional aid. What Mr. Olmert is going to need is a show of support in the face of the accession of a Palestinian Arab legislature that is the puppet of a terrorist regime in Iran that is readying an atomic bomb for use against the Jewish State.