Aftershock, Tuesday, November 22, 2005

The aftershocks from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s not-very-surprising move to quit the Likud and launch a new party roiled the political arena today. Polls show the Likud smashed to smithereens, with Labor headed by Amir Peretz bringing in twice as many Knesset seats as a Likud headed by Binyamin Netanyahu – while Sharon’s new party draws the largest share of votes and is able to form any coalition the premier prefers: with the Left or Right.

The Right meanwhile talks about unity, but if Avigdor Lieberman of National Union has his way, it’s the unification of all the Right, including the Likud that counts. Lieberman might know something about Netanyahu’s intentions – if Netanyahu is able to beat back Silvan Shalom, Uzi Landau and whoever else throws their hat into the Likud ring – after all, Lieberman rose to prominence as Netanyahu’s chief of staff when Netanyahu was prime minister. But if Netanyahu were to unite the Likud with the full spectrum of the Right, it would sour any chance he might think he has to win the crucial votes from the Center that are so necessary for winning an election here.

In the Center, say the polls, Shinui has suddenly become a much shrunken party, a satellite of the new Sharon party, which may be changing its temporary name from National Responsibility to ‘Qadima,’ meaning Forward, or with a slight change in vowels, Progress. On the Left, something similar has happened to Meretz-Yahad, where former party chairman, Yossi Sarid, has been talking about merging with Labor under Amir Peretz.

Meanwhile, in the north, Hezbollah reminded everyone that the stakes are high. In a concerted, orchestrated attack into the village of Ghajar, an Israeli Arab village that during the 18 years of Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon grew over the border, four Hezbollah cells – under cover of shooting at IDF fortifications along the entire Lebanese border – tried to kidnap some soldiers on patrol in the village. The plot failed, due to a high alert on the Israeli side about just such an attack. Little wonder Israel was expecting it – Hezbollah had promised in its own newspaper last week that by today’s Lebanese Independence Day, it would kidnap Israeli soldiers.

Under ordinary circumstances, the Hezbollah attack – the most concerted in the five years since Israel obeyed UN Security Council Resolutions ordering it to quit Lebanon – would have dominated today’s news, even if there was no loss of life. But given the drama in the Knesset yesterday, nothing was going to deprive the press this morning of its chances to prognosticate on the election campaign and its expected possible outcomes.

The conventional wisdom is that Sharon will come out of the campaign the most likely victor. But there are now so many variables affecting the outcome that the wise are trying to avoid predictions of any kind. This is the first three-way election race in Israeli history, and the first time that a centrist party has emerged from the Right – and by a sitting prime minister. For the first time in decades, Labor has an unabashed social democrat at its head, and for the first time in decades, the settlement movement is in shambles, leaderless after the Yesha Council lost its authority in the failed attempt to prevent the disengagement.

Meanwhile, the political jockeying over when the elections will take place continues: Netanyahu (presumed the likely Likud leader) wants a long campaign to get organized, Sharon and Peretz want short campaigns, each believing they have momentum on their side. In the meanwhile, Peretz is attacking Sharon and Netanyahu – and sounds as convinced he’ll be the next premier as he sounded when he said he would be the next Labor chairman. Sharon is attacking the Likud (and the political system in general) as ‘obstructionist,’ and Netanyahu is attacking Sharon, calling him ‘a dictator … who doesn’t believe in democracy.’

Yitzhak Rabin's Last Speech, which he delivered at the Tel Aviv peace rally on Nov. 4 1995

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