Go Israel
- A-Sharq Al-Awsat London's pan-Arab daily wrote, "Israeli elections: Between the Right and the extreme Right."
- The Palestinian Al-Quds opined, "We're witnessing the Israeli rivals in the election campaign outbidding each other in ultra-extremism, as a way to gain more votes. Israeli society has turned more extreme, and moved much further from peace and its obligations."
- Time magazine screamed, "Israel Election Dashes Hopes for Peace."
Not really. The close split between Kadima and Likud (early results without soldier ballots) may indicate that the Israeli public has coalesced toward the center, which even Time admits - but worries that the "mutual antagonism of both leaders" (the mutual antagonism of one of them wouldn't have been interesting) which "makes an accommodation all but impossible." Like, say, campaign antagonism between Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama?
But, for the sake of argument, what if the Israeli public has really moved one or two or more steps to the right? What then? Perhaps the pundits should consider what made them move and how to move them back, if back is where they need to go.
Israel is, after all, a democracy; a multiparty, open system with a free press and an informed electorate. The Israeli public has a voice and knows how to use it. Who influences it and how?
Israelis listen not only to their own leadership, but also to that of Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran - and watch what they do to threaten Israel and to poison their own people. Israelis listen to public demands by Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Bahrain - and know they all admit in private that they want Israel on their side against Iran. Israelis listen to the EU, the United States and the Quartet - and read the Oslo Accords, Gaza-Jericho, Oslo II, the Wye River and Hebron agreements, Taba and the Road Map, and wonder why asymmetrical paper agreements that require Israel to provide tangible benefits to the Palestinians in exchange for promises of security for Israel have not resulted in security for Israel.
And they become skeptical of more talk and more hard concessions in exchange for empty promises. Skepticism is reasonable. Perhaps Palestinian "[t]ermination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force," would incline Israelis to take a more "dovish" approach.
Interestingly, while clearly discouraged on the "peace front," Israelis appear not to have become skeptical of the importance of actually BEING one of only two countries in the region that can claim free, open, non-coercive multiparty elections (and one of them hasn't been at it very long).
Israel has not spent a single day, a single moment, in peace with its neighbors. Israel has not had a single day or a single moment in which it was not threatened with extinction - Iran is only the latest existential threat; in 1967, the rabbis were talking seriously about religious rituals that would be observed if Israel was forced to use the mass graves it was preparing for its citizens.
Under the circumstances, the Israeli public - center right or center left as the vote falls - deserve a cheer from small-d democrats around the world for another peaceful exercise of a precious franchise.
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