Israel Update for February 2009

Naturally enough, Tzipi Livni was elated when her party emerged with one more seat than Likud, declaring the election outcome a major triumph for her party and its commitment to vigorously pursue peace talks with the Palestinians. However a quick analysis of the overall vote gave the lie to this pronouncement, which was subsequently confirmed when President Peres assigned the task of forming a new government to Binyamin Netanyahu.

In fact, only 44 seats were won by the three mainly Jewish parties that strongly support the peace process, as opposed to 65 that went to the Likud party and its usual nationalist and religious allies (two of the three Arab parties are lukewarm at best about PA peace talks with Israel). All of the right wing and religious parties either question or oppose the negotiating process, mainly on grounds that it could easily bring a Muslim fundamentalist Palestinian state backed by Iran and Syria to Israel's doorsteps, and would probably result in the political re-division of Jerusalem, Judaism's holiest city on earth. Shas leaders are the most open to the process, but only if Hamas is fully dealt with first.

So given that reality, Netanyahu insisted that the 2009 election was basically an endorsement of his vow to focus on new economic and other practical arrangements with the Palestinian Authority instead of resurrecting stalled peace negotiations, while also keeping up significant military pressure on Hamas and other radical factions and taking a tougher line against Iran's nuclear program (his positions on these issues are also strongly endorsed by Lieberman). He noted with satisfaction that President Peres admitted on February 18 that the 2005 Israeli unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip was "a mistake we shall not repeat." Netanyahu was the most vocal Knesset critic of the controversial evacuation at the time, while Peres and Livni strongly backed it.

Most political analysts said the overall election result was indeed basically an endorsement of the Likud leader's more hawkish positions over Livni's dovish stand, even if her party did manage to win one more seat than Likud. And all agreed Kadima would not have even done that had it not taken on Hamas in such a forceful manner early this year, which most say was basically the Israeli Defense Force's achievement rather than the governments.

Serious Horse Trading

Both Livni and Netanyahu made a beeline to Avigdor Lieberman's door soon after the election outcome was announced. But the Yisrael Beiteinu leader had already declared on election night that his first choice was a Likud-led narrow right wing government, as he had stated during the campaign. He repeated this decision when he met with President Peres on February 19, but added that he hoped Netanyahu could set up a broad national unity government with Kadima and his party as the Likud's main partners.

Given that he resigned as Deputy Prime Minister from the Kadima-led coalition early last year due to the government's decision to negotiate a future re-division of Jerusalem with PA leader Mahmoud Abbas, it seemed that Livni would have an impossible task getting him back on board any government she headed unless she drastically altered her party's peace policies, which she again vowed not to do after the election, knowing it would certainly anger many of her supporters.

So instead, the new Kadima leader also proposed that a national unity government be set up with at least most of the Zionist parties participating in it. This concept was then publicly embraced by Netanyahu, although top Likud activists said they still preferred a narrower right wing and religious coalition.

The Likud leader stated that with so many critical issues facing the country, especially the Iranian nuclear threat and likely future rocket assaults from Hizbullah militia forces in Lebanon and Hamas, it might be good to form as broad a government as possible, as has occurred in other times of crisis. He was also aware of opinion polls that showed over 65% of Israeli voters want to see Likud and Kadima join together in a broad coalition to deal with the country's many problems, which now includes the same financial reverses being suffered all over the globe in the wake of the American economic meltdown.

But the former premier was not at all receptive to Livni's next suggestion-that she and Netanyahu each serve for two years as head of a "national emergency government," with the other serving as Foreign Minister. This unique arrangement was tried in 1984 when Likud, under the late Menachem Begin's successor Yitzhak Shamir, came out virtually tied with the opposition Labor party headed by Shimon Peres in the midst of a vote held as severe hyperinflation gripped the land. The so called rotatia that was agreed to then ("rotation" is a Hebrew word borrowed from English) proved extremely difficult to manage, with coalition battles going on all the time between the two dominant parties.

When it became clear that Netanyahu would probably reject her suggestion, Livni announced that she would rather sit in the opposition than join a Likud led "right-wing extremist government," as she termed it. "I've been in second place long enough" she told a party gathering on February 14. And most political pundits predicted that unless she changes her mind and joins a Likud-led broad coalition, that is exactly where she will end up, despite the fact that her party is the largest in the Knesset.

Analysts said it may take over one month for Netanyahu to form a new coalition. He announced he would negotiate first with Kadima, and only afterwards with the smaller parties who are his natural allies. Officially a candidate for prime minister has 42 days to attempt to put a government together. If he fails during that time, the same mandate can then be extended by the President, or he can ask someone else to give it a try. Livni tried and failed to do accomplish that task after Ehud Olmert resigned last September, due mainly to the strong aversion to some of her policies from Lieberman and Orthodox Shas leaders, which is what led to February's Knesset election-over one year earlier than scheduled.

Will A Marriage Deal Be Brokered?

Binyamin Netanyahu will have one particular problem to iron out as soon as he possibly can. Lieberman's party has as one of its main planks a call for civil marriage unions in Israel, with the current system only allowing for Orthodox-officiated rabbinical ceremonies, and that only if one partner is Jewish. A majority of Lieberman's supporters are Russian-speaking immigrants, many of whom find it impossible to wed in the country since they are not Jewish according to Orthodox reckoning. (It is estimated that up to one-third of the million plus native Russian speaking immigrants who arrived here during the 1990s fall under this category, many with just a Jewish father and Gentile mother, and others non-Jewish spouses or other Gentile relatives of Jews).