Israeli Elections: Candidates and Cottage Cheese Posted by Gayle Meyers

Israelis will go to the polls on March 28 to elect new leadership (or to re-elect old leadership.) Campaign commercials pit a talking sperm against an ostrich with his head in the sand, and the ghost of Entebbe hero Yonatan Netanyahu against the hovering spirit of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who suffered a stroke on January 5, 2006, and has been in a coma ever since. The silliness of the ads cannot disguise the different visions that candidates are offering to the public, not only on domestic issues but on issues that could shape the future of peace and war in the Middle East.

Sharon’s party, Kadima, which he formed shortly before his illness, is now in the hands of former Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert. It is leading in the polls but is fighting for votes with Labor on its left and Likud on its right.

Israel is a parliamentary democracy in which political parties contend for seats in the 120-member parliament, or Knesset. The party that wins the most seats gets to form a government. Its leader becomes the prime minister and the political leader of the nation. (There is a president, but his post is mostly ceremonial.) A March 9 poll gave Kadima a leading 37 seats, with 19 going to Labor and 17 to Likud. Smaller parties, with agendas ranging from civil rights for Israel’s Arab minority to ensuring the role of traditional Judaism in the country’s law and educational systems, vie to become part of the governing coalition.

Electioneering here is a funny mix of slick and simple. The public election system gives every party a certain amount of television and radio airtime, and the ads started running last week. There is some handwringing about whether political candidates can or should be “sold like cottage cheese.” As an American used to short soundbites and attack ads sponsored by shadowy interest groups, not only is the answer to this question an obvious “yes,” but I find the ads to be remarkably long and full of information.

srI’m a former Pentagon civil servant who specialized in counterproliferation and the Middle East, and now I manage regional security projects for Search for Common Ground, an international conflict transformation organization. In this role, I have been living in Jerusalem for nearly two years, moving fairly easily among the Israeli, Palestinian, and international communities. This is my first chance to watch an Israeli election up close. In my posts over the next few days, I will use the ads as a jumping off point to introduce you to the candidates and their platforms, and give you my thoughts on what Israel’s political future has to do with a progressive national security policy for the United States. Let me start with Kadima.

Kadima’s ads scream “establishment.” They feature a medley of interviews with the candidates at the top of its parliamentary list, all heavy-hitters from the political and security arena who defected from other parties to join Sharon. Former Prime Minister Shimon Peres, Minister of Defense Shaul Mofaz, and Minister of Foreign Affairs Tzipi Livni all appear freshly scrubbed and combed, clothed in serious dark suits, talking earnestly against the background of a campaign jingle that incorporates the opening notes of Israel’s national anthem. The major break in this pattern is a soft-focus ode to Olmert, which shows him in all the required poses of statesmanship: in his office, signing a document while a photo of Sharon looks benignly down on him, in a kitchen with his charming wife, jogging on the road with a security detail, and talking with President Bush.

All this staidness does not disguise the fact that Kadima’s campaign platform includes the radical proposal that Israel unilaterally decide on its permanent borders and withdraw from some Palestinian land into these new borders within four years. While the arrangement would fall far short of Palestinian aspirations—and indeed could leave Palestinians struggling in a fragmented bit of territory with no connection to their holy places in Jerusalem—it is a dramatically pragmatic suggestion in the Israeli political context. Leaders of the Palestinian Authority’s newly elected Hamas movement called the plan a declaration of war. News reports say that Olmert coordinated his plan with the U.S., but there has been no official statement so far. Like Olmert himself, the U.S. would be wise to take seriously Palestinian concerns about the plan. Even though Israel has attractive reasons for acting unilaterally, it would be foolish to indulge in wishful thinking. A “solution” to the conflict that one of the parties rejects is no solution at all. Instead, if Israel plans to continue with unilateral moves instead of returning to the negotiating table, the U.S. should suggest a program of “coordinated unilateralism,” in which Israeli and Palestinian leaders take steps that meet their own needs but lead slowly in the direction of peace. Hamas, which rejects negotiations but is maintaining a one-sided lull (tahdiah) in attacks against Israel, may be just the right partner for this kind of policy.

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