AJC Mideast Briefing

Thriving on the Long-Neglected Middle Ground: Why Is “Kadima” Still the Dominant Party? What Tests Might Olmert's Policies Face? A Weekly Briefing on Israeli and Middle Eastern Affairs February 6, 2006 Dr. Eran Lerman Director Israel/Middle East Office The present political dispensation in Israel is highly unusual, perhaps unprecedented. In the tense period before the Knesset elections on March 28, the country will continue to be governed by a party—Kadima, meaning “forward,” Ariel Sharon’s new creation—which was not even in existence three months ago. Highly ambitious for the future, it is somewhat thin on the ground as yet—and currently holds only 17 out of 120 seats in the outgoing Knesset; and amidst all this, the founding father and towering figure, Sharon, has been laid low by a massive brain hemorrhage. Yet the polls are clear and consistent: Despite Sharon’s absence; despite the challenge posed by Hamas; despite the terror attacks; despite the violence, Jew against Jew, in Amona, protesting the evacuation of a settler outpost, Kadima seems set to win the next elections and dominate the new cabinet.   What happened? The so-called “pundits” were wrong again. This party was never just a personal vehicle for Sharon to ride to power. It turned out to be an authentic ex pression of something many Israelis have been yearning for: the need for a sober, pragmatic party of the center, seduced by neither the left-wing fantasy that peace is at hand nor by the right–wing fantasy that the redemption of the Land of Israel brings us within reach of the messianic era. David Ben-Gurion tried to govern that way in his time, but for years Israeli politics have been polarized and poisoned by the profound enmity between the radical wings.   Moreover, Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert seems to offer a coherent strategy—short, perhaps, on stirring vision, long on common sense, as most Israelis have come to see it. Peace may not be at hand; in the sanitized language of our diplomatic world, the prospects of sitting down to the permanent status negotiations were slim even before Hamas won the Palestinian parliamentary elections. By now, there is little or no hope of implementing any stage of the Road Map in the foreseeable future—other than by unilateral action. Hence the need for Israel to plan carefully; find the right path between the two troubling options of feeding a Hamas government and starving the Palestinian people—bad ideas in both cases; enhance our own defense, including the anti-terrorist barrier; and down the road, seek a solid understanding with the U.S. (and perhaps our friends in Europe) on the scope of a future disengagement in the West Bank, if no other way is found to move forward toward a two-state solution (which Hamas abhors). Moreover, a high degree of international coordination and cooperation is necessary as we face the clash of wills with the Iranian revolution; and so it was important this week to hear the comparison with the rise of the Nazis coming, not from Israelis or Americans, but from the highly popular chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel.   To sustain this vital (and welcome) sense of like-mindedness in the face of the common threat, it is necessary for Israel—as Olmert sees it—to prove itself to be both able and willing to carry out its own commitments under the Road Map, the various economic agreements, and the understandings with the U.S. administration: hence the new edge of determination in implementing the law and moving toward removal of unauthorized “outposts” in Judea and Samaria. This led to the painful clash last Wednesday—and more could be in store. So far, this too has helped sustain Kadima’s command in the polls. Most Israelis watched with sorrow and pain the violent events in Amona, and even within the left there were voices calling upon the authorities to look carefully into the conduct of all involved, perhaps even to set up a commission of inquiry, as the right wing demands. Nevertheless, most of the public did not accept the right’s attacks on the government as “illegitimate,” nor the claim that Acting Prime Minister Olmert was “looking” for a bloody confrontation. True, the government chose not to shy away from this confrontation, but it is equally true that elements from among the “hill youth” and others on the radical edges of the Orange camp, who gathered in Amona, saw this as an opportunity to prove that the relatively peaceful evacuations of last summer cannot be repeated.   Most Israelis would concede that the violence, in itself, was tragic and posed a danger to the democratic norms of behavior, but they instinctively feel that it would be equally dangerous for the future of Israel if: The rule of law were overridden for ideological reasons, as noble as these may be ; The capacity of government to take crucial, if painful, decisions were made subject to the veto of a radical minority; The prospects for progress—if not toward peace, at least toward a solution which maintains Israel’s identity as both Jewish and democratic—would be reversed out of the fear of further violence.   Still, three dangerous challenges attend Olmert’s chosen course of action, and one, or all, could gain sufficient momentum in the next few weeks to alter the present political balance:   Among the settler community and their supporters, the Disengagement trauma is still festering and breeding deep hostility, not only toward Olmert, but also against the Supreme Court (the “rule-of-law leftist gang”); the “opinionated” (i.e., left-leaning) media; the police (“Moshe Karadi’s storm troopers,” Karadi being the commissioner of police); and even the historically sacrosanct IDF, where many of them served in the most demanding and dangerous units. The legitimacy of the state itself is being questioned, once it is no longer seen as an instrument of the Messianic project; in an eerie mirror image of Hamas taking down the Palestinian flag in Ramallah, there were settlers burning Israeli flags in Amona. As this alienation deepens, the level of violence could escalate further, mobilizing the right-wing vote on March 28 .   Palestinian terror attacks are likely to have an impact; already, as a Kassam rocket fell on a mobile home housing one of the families evicted from the Gaza settlements, and a seven-month-old baby was seriously wounded, the Likud leadership could hardly be blamed for muttering loudly, “We told you so.” With this in mind, Israeli reactions, which already took the lives of five Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Al-Aqsa Brigades perpetrators, in well-targeted air strikes, might grow harsher in the next few weeks.   Finally, and in many ways most importantly, the sense that the present course is the right one depends to a large extent on the ability of Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzippi Livni (who seems to have had her successful first visit to Cairo) and the venerable Shimon Peres to show that the strategy of like-mindedness actually works—in standing together against Hamas and against Iran. If bad cracks begin to appear; if the instinct for appeasement takes over; if the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Khaled Mash`al are seen by the rest of the world as legitimate interlocutors, the older impulse of Israelis to abandon the present “multilateralist” approaches and to revert to strong unilateral measures might be reflected at the ballot box.

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