2006-01-17-Israel_election

By Ira Sharkansky

If I was going to wager on the upcoming Israeli election, I would put it all on Ehud Olmert and his Kadima Party. Olmert is sounding judiciously prime ministerial, posturing in ways that suggest what Ariel Sharon would have done. Sharon is basking in the aura of national hero, but still in a coma and worrying his physicians.

The major competing parties are each making serious mistakes.

One failing is that leaders of both are conceding Kadima's election. The most they are prepping themselves for is to win enough seats to join Kadima in the coalition. That may not be adequate to motivate their organizations for a difficult campaign. Beyond that, Labor and Likud are making additional errors. Their leaders would not do well in a test of elementary political science.

Most prominent among the errors of the Labor leader, Amir Peretz, is to focus almost entirely on social issues like poverty. Not only is this the emphasis of his own background and campaign statements, but it is the personal emphasis of almost all the candidates who did well enough in the party primary to be slotted for sure seats in the next Knesset. Why is this mistaken? The polls show that voters are more interested in security issues. The public has been focused for the past five year years on the Palestinian uprising, and more recently on Iran's nuclear program and its president's assertion that Israel should be destroyed. Leading Laborites offer little by way of expertise in the fields of security or international relations. Former Labor Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, and Nobel Peace Prize winner Shimon Peres is with Kadima, and Peretz has rejected all suggestions to make overtures to former commanding general of the IDF and Labor Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

Likud, for its part, is too focused on an antiquated view of national security. Polls have shown for years that the public is willing to trade land for security, and to rid Israel of responsibility for Palestinian settlements. The withdrawal from Gaza had the support of a majority of those answering numerous queries, and was arguably a success both in its implementation and in its capacity to reduce Israeli vulnerability. Sure there are homemade rockets coming over the border, but few of them do any damage, and there are no daily attacks on Israeli troops and settlers within Gaza.

Likud has become, in effect, the party of figures who opposed the withdrawal from Gaza, and resist any further concessions of land to the Palestinians. They are four square against unilateral concessions like that of Gaza, which may be the future if Palestinians do not negotiate reasonably, and they do not seem likely to offer the Palestinians very much if negotiations do seem possible. Some of the extremists have not given up the old aspiration of controlling the Land of Israel on both sides of the Jordan (going back to opposing the division of what was the original Balfour Declaration in 1921 and the creation of what was called the Emirate of Transjordan.)

In other words, Labor is pitching itself to the left and Likud to the right. They are conceding the center to Kadima, and the great blocs of votes are in the center. Politicians go for votes. Ideologues go for what they think is right. Most democracies are governed most of the time by politicians.

Labor loyalists (who have not left for Kadima) and Likud loyalists (who have not left for Kadima) each dream for the glory days of 40 and more seats in the Knesset. Current polls indicate that neither will reach 20, and one or both may fall below 15.

Sharkansky is an emeritus member of the political science department at Hebrew University in Jerusalem