NAZARETH // The near-tie in parliamentary seats between the
centrist Kadima party and the right-wing Likud is evidence of a dramatic lurch
rightward by the Israeli electorate this week.
Kadima leader Tzipi Livni won a wafer-thin
victory after the final results were released yesterday because traditional
left-wing voters defected to her from Meretz and the once-dominant Labor party.
Likewise Mr Netanyahu and his right-wing Likud party failed to
muster the necessary votes to ward off Ms Livni’s challenge because traditional
Likud supporters drifted into the camp of the far-right, voting for Avigdor
Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party.
The one certainty of the outcome, according to Neve Gordon, a
political scientist at Ben Gurion University in the Negev, is that the Right is
in the ascendant. “The results clearly testify to the fact that a large majority
of the elected politicians are against an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement
based on the two-state solution.”
In the coming days, Shimon Peres, the president, will tap the
party leader most likely to establish a stable government. Ostensibly Mr
Netanyahu, wearing the Right’s mantle, appears better placed than Ms Livni,
despite having only 27 to her 28 seats.
But in reality both must court the mid-size parties to stand a
chance of forming a government, and in the fractious atmosphere of Israeli
politics that will be no easy matter.
Top of the list to woo has been Mr Lieberman, widely seen as
kingmaker. It is hard to imagine any arrangement that does not include his
Yisrael Beiteinu party.
Ms Livni cannot pass the threshold of 61 seats needed for a
majority in the 120-member parliament without drawing in 13 seats from Labor as
well as Mr Lieberman’s 15 mandates and the seats of one of the two
ultra-Orthodox parties.
Few observers believe such a coalition can be constructed. Most
in the battered Labor party want to sit on the opposition benches while they
rebuild the party, and would certainly object to joining Yisraeli Beiteinu.
Their power-hungry leader, Ehud Barak, would probably tear apart his party if he
tried to join either a Kadima or Likud government.
Ms Livni, meanwhile, has been clutching at a straw: that she and
Mr Lieberman share some common political ground. Both appear to want a two-state
solution offering minimal concessions to the Palestinians, both are passionately
secular and both are enthusiastic about centralising political power, possibly
through Israel’s reform into a presidential system.
Nonetheless, Mr Lieberman’s agenda is more openly anti-Arab than
Ms Livni’s and ultimately he may have to answer to his voters, who expect a
right-wing government.
Mr Netanyahu can pass the 61-seat threshold only if he calls on
Yisrael Beiteinu and the 11 seats of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, as well as a
further 12 from smaller far-right and religious parties.
His chief problem is that Yisrael Beiteinu and Shas are more
implacable enemies than natural allies. During the campaign, Shas’s spiritual
leader, Rabbi Yosef Ovadia, even equated Mr Lieberman with Satan.
The latter’s “sin” is that he wants to end a monopoly on marriage
ceremonies fiercely guarded by the rabbis. It is a plank of his platform he
cannot easily discard. He draws heavy support from the one million so-called
Russians who left in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse. Many are of
questionable Jewishness and have been denied the chance to marry in Israel by
the rabbinate.
Three other factors are likely to weigh on Mr Netanyahu’s mind.
First, there is a long and not always harmonious history between
himself and Mr Lieberman. During Mr Netanyahu’s premiership in the late 1990s,
Mr Lieberman was both head of his private office and director-general of the
Likud party.
Privately Mr Netanyahu is known to regard his protégé as
dangerously ambitious. Mr Lieberman is already being touted as the country’s
next prime minister but one, a role he would like to see become more
presidential – and, some would say, dictatorial.
Second, the formation of what will be effectively a coalition of
the far-right, in which Mr Lieberman would be all too visible, would isolate Mr
Netanyahu internationally and probably set him on a collision course with the
new administration in Washington.
And third, a lengthy police inquiry into Mr Lieberman’s shady
business dealings is reaching a climax. According to well-placed sources, the
police have established a watertight case of corruption. “If Lieberman is
charged, his party will be finished. It’s a one-man show,” said Dr Gordon, the
political scientist.
In the circumstances, the natural solution for both Mr Netanyahu
and Ms Livni might be to set aside their differences and establish a unity
government, possibly with Yisrael Beiteinu as the junior partner.
The inclusion of Kadima in a Netanyahu government would provide
precisely the diplomatic cover Mr Netanyahu needs to make his government
durable. It would also keep Mr Lieberman on the sidelines. Ms Livni says she
will not concede the top job, though she may relent over the coming days.
However, Dr Gordon thinks Kadima may see it as in its interests
to sit in the opposition for the time being, watching a weak Netanyahu
government flounder.
“Remember, Olmert had 78 seats in his coalition. The best
Netanyahu can probably hope for is 65. There is a global financial crisis coming
and a potentially hostile administration in Washington. If I were Livni, I’d sit
this one out.”
Similar sentiments were voiced yesterday by Kadima’s Meir
Sheetrit, the interior minister. He said Mr Netanyahu would be forced to lead
“an extremist religious coalition”. “If a government like this is established I
anticipate it will have a very hard life.”
Whatever emerges, the legitimacy of Israel’s system of governance
is in the spotlight. Domestic political paralysis is likely to ensue, and
Israelis face the threat of another short-lived government. Most Israeli
commentators agree that the country desperately needs to overhaul the political
system, either through electoral reform or a Lieberman-style presidential
revolution.
Both changes would make the government more stable by increasing
the large parties’ power. But with the smaller parties in no hurry to vote for
their own extinction, no one is expecting reform soon.
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