Rumbles in the jungle, Tuesday, November 29, 2005

While Sharon waits for Likud and Labor to form their party lists of nominees for Knesset before he announces his list for Kadima, Peretz, in Labor, drew another 25,000 Labor party registrants during the last two weeks. Peretz will thus be able to practically decide on the list that Labor will present – and in both parties, the emphasis is on new faces.

All the leaping from one ship to another has only added an impetus to the underlying feeling in the country that the political system that Israelis know is not working – or is facing its greatest test of all. Everyone understands that these coming elections are the closest thing to a referendum on the future of the territories that has ever been held in Israel. Sharon's new party, for example, has already issued a platform – and for the first time, a mainstream Israeli political party has come out in favor of a Palestinian state, demilitarized, of course, with security zones for Israeli defense, but the phrase 'Palestinian state,' once verboten in Israeli political discourse is now not merely topical, but a campaign promise.

Because of the sense of disarray in the system, Sharon is promising, if elected, to change the form of government to a presidential system instead of a government formed out of the elected parliament. It's a promise with appeal to many Israelis that tend to believe that (almost) all things American are good, including its political system. The idea is to give the prime minister the power to make decisions and see them executed, something that the Likud rebels did their most to deny Sharon. Ironically, however, Sharon's very success in conducting the withdrawal from Gaza proved that a prime minister with enough political wiles is strong enough to achieve what he or she wants.

The ultimate struggle for star power in the party lists remains the one over Shimon Peres, who was in Barcelona today and has promised a decision when he returns to Israel later this week. The betting remains on him throwing his support to the new Sharon party, especially after Dalia Itzik, his most loyal ally in Labor, announced she was joining Sharon's party. The local political reports suggest that one of Peres' bargaining issues with Sharon was the guarantee of a place for Itzik in the Kadima list. With that hurdle overcome, the guessing now is that Shimon will follow Dalia – though not as a candidate for Knesset, rather as a supporter of the party; apparently guaranteed a role in the peace process that Sharon keeps promising will follow the elections.

That process will involve some form of talks with the Palestinian Authority and the news today from the occupied territories – and Gaza – shows that Palestinian politics has learned a lot, if not enough, from Israeli politics. Fateh, the ruling party in Palestinian politics, tried out the Israeli 'primaries' system to form its list of candidates for the coming Palestinian Legislative Council elections, and for the time being has failed. The elections have been called off because of malpractice and violence during voting.

So, how will Fateh form its list without elections? Easy. According to press reports, Mohammad Dahlan of Gaza, and Jibril Rajoub of the West Bank apparently have hammered out an agreement with Marwan Barghouti so that Barghouti will draw up the list of Fateh candidates, seemingly forming a troika of leadership for the largest Palestinian party. And it's all being presumably done with the approval of PA President Mahmoud Abbas, who promised when he was elected early this year as Yasser Arafat's successor, that he would only serve one term in office.

Thus Barghouti – in Israeli prison for five life sentences (or until a peace deal is struck freeing him, as some Israeli officials have been intimating) after conviction in a Tel Aviv court for orchestrating murders of Israeli civilians in terror attacks in the Jerusalem area – may be gradually assuming the mantle of the late Arafat.

For the Palestinians, Barghouti is a hero, and if, as is now anticipated by Israeli intelligence, Fateh rebuffs the Hamas challenge, whoever wins the Israeli elections two months after the PLC vote, might find themselves paying a secret visit to Beersheba Prison to find out just what kind of deal Barghouti is ready to cut.

That leads back to the Israeli elections, and how, despite all the talk of changing the system of government, fighting corruption, and defeating poverty with social-democratic economics, the real issue is just what kind of deal Israel is ready to cut for peace. In short, the separation fence, which takes in about 8 percent of the West Bank, may be described now as a security fence, but more than ever it looks like it will more or less be the border between Israel and Palestine.

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