Israel will elect a new prime minister tomorrow, either a very new one or one who has been there before. But regardless of who wins, few people in Israel or beyond are predicting significant diplomatic shifts any time soon. If anything, the situation with regards to the peace process could get worse — if that is at all possible.
The latest polls predict that Benjamin Netanyahu, a former premier, will recapture his post and will lead his right-wing Likud party to victory. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni of the centrist Kadima party is a close second. Perhaps the most striking poll result indicates that Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s Labor party, which has long dominated Israeli politics, has been pushed out of third place by hard-liner Avigdor Lieberman and his Yisrael Beiteinu party. That sets Lieberman up as a kingmaker, holding the crucial swing votes that any winner will need to form a government. And Lieberman is as anti-Arab as it gets.
Polling organizations are warning that unusually large numbers of Israelis, estimated at 15-20 percent, say they are undecided, which could make the result difficult to predict. Yet, running across Israel is a sense of inevitability that the right will win this election. All the signs are that Israel has shifted to the right, in large part because many Israelis no longer believe further peace agreements are a serious prospect. The war in Gaza has boosted Netanyahu and other hard-line candidates as Israelis prepare to choose not only their new leader but a new 120-member Parliament.
After last month’s devastating Israeli offensive, Gaza and Hamas are at the top of the agenda in the Israeli campaign, and each candidate seems to be trying to outdo the next with a harsher stand against the group. While all the top candidates promise to be tough with Hamas, Netanyahu takes the hardest line. He has called for Hamas to be uprooted from Gaza and says the Gaza campaign was ended too soon. Lest this give any joy to President Mahmoud Abbas and his “moderate” Fatah party, Netanyahu says he will allow existing Jewish settlements in the West Bank to expand. He claims any territory Israel relinquishes to the Palestinians as part of a peace deal would be “grabbed by extremists.” He contends peace efforts should focus on anything other than creating an independent state.
Those views will put Netanyahu at odds with the Palestinians, all other Arabs and most of the international community, whose most important member as far as Israel is concerned, is the US. President Barack Obama has been attempting to reach out to Arabs and promising fresh approaches to deal with the Middle East, including moving forward vigorously with the vision of establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Apparently, however, Netanyahu and the majority of Israelis are unwilling to make any concessions for peace even if it stands in the way of Obama’s softer overtures. Popular with Israelis, the military action in Gaza swung voter concerns away from peace talks, and back to conflict, boosting the likes of Netanyahu, Barak and Lieberman.
