Center, Right?

Make no mistake, Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party was victorious in Israel’s parliamentary election on January 22^nd. That it was by the slenderest of margins, a squeak-through victory suggests that any ruling coalition will move closer to those parties who pushed back Likud’s margins (taking a meager 31 out of 120 seats)… and that would be a number of centrist parties, including a surprise showing by TV-personality, Yair Lapid (above), and his newly-formed centrist Yesh Atid Party (which won 19 seats). Israelis are frustrated by any number of issues, but like most constituencies in this economically impaired world, the message of economic desperation from the middle class echoed loud and clear.

And one of the stickiest issues in the nation is the hardened practice of the ultra-Orthodox practitioners, pledged to a lifetime of religious study, who demand support from the government but refuse to perform the compulsory military service required of all other Israeli citizens. They wield a lot of political power in this tiny nation, surrounded on all side by less-than-friendly neighbors. But that they are an economic drain on taxpayers who are struggling to makes ends meet in dire times is an ugly sore that refuses to heal. The election produced a truly complicating vote of 60 seats for the right (which includes Likud and other rightist parties plus those with strong religious affiliation) and 60 seats for the rest (center, left and Arab-represented factions).

The notion of “right, left and center” varies from party to party and from issue to issue. Strangely, virtually all of the concessions to Palestine have been under rightist leadership, and there has been no movement at all from left-of-center governments in recent years. While this election might temper some of Netanyahu’s hard-line talk, perhaps even adding a thaw to his more-than-frigid relationship with the U.S. President, the issues that remain between Israel and Palestine are huge, and neither side particularly trusts the other.

While there are plenty of politicians (and even a majority of Israelis) who support a two-state solution to the Palestinian impasse, the underlying issues that must be resolved are seemingly irreconcilable in the current climate, no matter who is in power in Israel. Netanyahu has approved many new West Bank Jewish settlements in his years at the helm, but to create a true two-state solution, those settlements would have to be dismantled (remember Gaza?). Further, what steps can Israel demand to insure its own territorial integrity, to stop attacks from being launched in any permitted Palestinian state, without violating the political independence of that new nation? And the most difficult part of the solution would be what to do about Jerusalem, a city with deep religious significance for Muslims and Jews (okay, Christians have a pretty big stake in the city as well, but they aren’t demanding territorial independence there). The same buildings and shrines have relevance for both religions.

Netanyahu faces a deeply distressed middle class, void of hope for a path out of the economic doldrums that define their lives. If nothing else, January 22^nd produced a loud call for change. Netanyahu will struggle with compromises to effect a new government coalition – if he can – whatever results will be particularly fragile given the split of voter sentiments. “Several commentators saw [the recent] vote as an ‘interim’ election, predicting that the new coalition, whatever its makeup, would not be able to withstand the pressing challenges ahead, including a $10 billion budget deficit and the question of whether to launch a military strike against the Iranian nuclear program.

“‘This is a government that will not be able to make decisions on anything — on the peace process, on equal sharing of the burden or on budgetary matters,’ Emmanuel Rosen, a prominent television analyst, said early [January 23^rd] on Channel 10. ‘The next elections are already on the horizon.’” New York Times, January 22^nd. Hawkish powers have been slapped in the face, but they are unlikely to relinquish their hardened positions anytime soon. And the dominance of domestic problems coupled with the oceans of irreconcilable differences with Palestine suggest that a political solution to that latter crisis is nowhere on the horizon.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the kind of polarization that has ripped the United States into warring factions has just been mirrored in this Israeli election.