Palestinian issue overshadows election in Israel
Country is again divided over the question of what to do with captured territories
JERUSALEM— Deeply divided and foul of mood, Israelis are headed toward what seems like a referendum on their long-serving, silver-tongued prime minister, the hard-line Benjamin Netanyahu.
But with so many of them having despaired of peace talks with the Palestinians, the focus is mostly on Netanyahu’s personality, his expense scandals and the soaring cost of living. And as no candidate is likely to win big in the wild jumble of Israel’s political landscape, the outcome of the March 17 election could well be a joint government between Netanyahu and his moderate challenger Isaac Herzog.
Much has changed in the world since Netanyahu first became prime minister in 1996, but Israel remains stuck with the question of what to do with the highly strategic, biblically resonant, Palestinian-populated lands it captured almost a half-century ago. After decades of failed peace talks, the issue has become such a vexation that politicians seem to fear it, and voters look away.
When he called the early election in November, Netanyahu seemed a shoo-in, but somewhere things went wrong. Polls show his nationalist Likud Party running slightly behind Herzog’s Labour Party, rebranded the Zionist Union in a bid for nationalist votes. There are scenarios in which Herzog — improbably mildmannered in a high-decibel land — becomes prime minister. And that would change the music: Herzog is a conciliator genuinely interested in ending the occupation of lands captured in the 1967 war.
Some things to watch for: Israel is nearly ungovernable Despite its reputation for plucky unity, the country is badly fragmented, and that’s reflected in parliament un- der its proportional representation system.
Combined, the two big parties get far less than half the vote. There is a nationalist party appealing to Russian speakers, another for secular liberals and two for the squeezed middle class. A united list represents the one-fifth of citizens who are Arabs and is itself divided between communist, nationalist and Islamist factions. There are four religious parties, for Jews of European versus Middle Eastern descent and for varying degrees of nationalism. Akingmaker comes By dint of necessity, this constellation has coalesced into rival leftist and rightist blocs: the Arab parties aligned with the dovish left, and the religious with the nationalistic right. If either wins 61 seats combined, its main party governs.
But for the first time in decades, there is a new party that seems genuinely non-aligned: Kulanu, led by Moshe Kahlon, a working-class Li- kud breakaway of Libyan Jewish descent who became popular for reducing mobile phone costs in previous governments. He says he will go with whichever side makes him finance minister — as both almost certainly would — and seeks to reduce the cost of living. He appears to care little about the Palestinian issue. The reluctant right The winning bloc often rules in alliance with parts of the other bloc. Such coalitions widen the base and win points for moderation and inclusiveness. They are also paralyzed by disagreement and tend to collapse under their internal contradictions, as Netanyahu’s did four months ago.
The right sees the West Bank as the heartland of biblical Israel and also a place of immense strategic value, since Israel without it is reduced at its narrowest point to about 15 kilometres wide. The left’s key argument is that permanent control of millions more Arabs would destroy Israel as a Jewish-majority state.
So great is the pressure on the right that successive Likud leaders have abruptly changed course or even crossed the line, including thenprime ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert. Netanyahu, who in 2009 accepted the principle of Palestinian statehood, appeared to renounce all he had once stood for; but actions did not follow. The theory that he was just pretending so as to confuse his critics is gaining currency by the day. Impossible peace? Even among proponents of a West Bank pullout, the talk is of saving Israel demographically as a Jewish-majority state rather than making peace. Many yearn for unilateral moves, having given up on the possibility of a negotiated deal after all these years.
Israel might conceivably agree to the near-total West Bank pullout the Palestinians seek; previous governments have. The Palestinians may agree to drop the demand that refugees’ descendants be allowed to move to Israel, potentially by the millions. But the real conundrum is Jerusalem, where a division of the intertwined holy city along ethnic lines would lead to perhaps the world’s most complicated map. Unity government possible With the electorate confused and fractured and no clear path forward on the key issues, and with neither Netanyahu nor Herzog likely to win a convincing majority, a plausible outcome has their parties banding together. They may also agree to rotate as prime minister.
Such has already happened in 1984. Labour’s Shimon Peres and Likud’s Yitzhak Shamir lived in uneasy coexistence and switched jobs halfway through. The main issue, then as now, was the West Bank; Peres negotiated over it with Jordan, only to see his peace plans scuttled by the skeptical Shamir. Shortly thereafter the first Palestinian uprising began.
Many fear another one is coming, even as Israelis focus on the price of cottage cheese.