Uncertainty ahead of Israeli poll

Israelis will likely head to the polls again in February following Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni's failure to cobble together a new coalition, an election unlikely to bring stability crucial to domestic and diplomatic initiatives.

Livni pulled the plug on negotiations with Meretz, the Pensioners and ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism (UTJ) and Shas parties amid rumors that the latter had made a secret pact with the Likud to go to fresh elections. 

Most political factions decided on Tuesday to set 10 February as election day, overruling the strident protests of UTJ in a move that confirms that no attempt will be made by an alternative prime ministerial candidate to form a government ahead of the 17 November cut-off.

UTJ objects to the election date fearing a low turnout from their constituents, as the head rabbi of the Gerrer Hasidim's granddaughter is marrying the day before on Tu Bishvat, a minor religious holiday celebrated into the night by many Hasidic sects.  

Livni made a key error in the coalition negotiations in leaving decisive substantive negotiations with Shas until the last minute, having already inked a deal with Labor. Her team probably added insult to injury, in the eyes of Shas, by engaging in parallel talks with the secularist Meretz whose five MKs were never going to tip the balance of power.

The talks with Meretz and Labor deal were designed to build pressure on Shas through giving the impression that a coalition could be formed without them.

The ruse failed, promoting the conception within Shas that it was about to enter a narrow center-left government in which the gains won in the coalition formation process would be lost in government where its rightist credentials would be undermined, through association, with diplomatic talks with the Palestinians on the division of Jerusalem.

Jerusalem is a "genuine issue" for Shas, according to Bar-Ilan University Professor Ephraim Inbar. "Also, the leader of the party preferred to have elections now to prevent his potential competitor from coming back if elections are delayed," he told ISN Security Watch, referring to the former head of the Shas political faction Aryeh Deri and incumbent Eli Yishai.

Claims from the Livni camp that Shas was never really bargaining in good faith appear to have some merit given that the NIS 500-700 million (US$132-$185 million) for increased child allowances and extension of religious courts' jurisprudence purportedly promised by Kadima went a long way to fulfilling the religious party's demands.

Referring to Kadima and Shas, Ben Gurion University political scientist Dr Neve Gordon told ISN Security Watch, "Each side was playing chicken and it seemed like neither of them wanted to get off the road […] It's not clear to me that either of them really wanted elections," he said.

It was always going to be a hard task to convince Shas' Council of Torah Sages and Ashkenazi United Torah Judaism to back a woman for the premiership given the lack of women in the leadership of the ultra-Orthodox parties and supporting movements.

Livni won significant support amongst the secular public for her decision to end the coalition negotiating process ahead of an extended deadline set by President Shimon Peres, which prevented further galling days of pointless negotiation and bolstered her Kadima-promoted image as a paragon of a new brand of corruption-free politics.

Referring to her decision to end the coalition talks, Gordon said, "It is clear that Livni received polls showing that she could […] otherwise she would have found another solution, gone with a smaller coalition."

Her public popularity and lack of significant governance experience will be tested in campaigning against her chief premiership rivals Binyamin Netanyahu (Likud) and Ehud Barak (Labor). Ironically, her lack of leadership experience may prove a boon given the controversial nature of her rivals' previous prime ministerial tenures.

Lame duck

Outgoing Prime Minster Ehud Olmert has been given something of a reprieve by the election decision, which looks set to extend his tenure in office by several months – pending indictment on corruption charges.

He may choose to use the intervening period to seek concrete progress on talks with the Palestinians, with a slated peace conference at Sharm El Sheikh in November perhaps providing an opportunity to move the process forward or provide markers of progress till that point.

However, he is now an isolated figure and will rely on the good graces of both Livni and Barak to provide substantive political backing to any diplomatic moves.

Both would stand to gain from a diplomatic breakthrough on the Palestinian track with Barak following President Shimon Peres in recent days in giving the first open backing by a major Israeli party leader to the 2002 Arab League Peace Initiative (API). Thereby he hopes to provide a clear point of differentiation between Livni and himself.

Nevertheless, the chances for a short-term breakthrough appear bleak, with any genuine progress on the Palestinian and Syrian peace tracks attendant on the result of the Israeli and US elections and efforts to establish a Palestinian unity government.

Losers

The big losers from the collapse of the coalition talks are undoubtedly the Labor party and Pensioners. The latter were the surprise package of the 2006 legislative elections, emerging with seven Knesset seats in what was a protest vote.

Clearly ill-prepared for the rigors of coalition membership, the party's parliamentary faction split asunder in mid-term with one faction seeking the patronage of Russian-Israeli tycoon Arcadi Gaydamak – currently on trial in France for alleged illicit arms sales to Angola. The factions reunited recently in a bid to garner ministerial seats in a Livni government, but were given short shrift by the Kadima negotiating team. The party now could disappear altogether from the Israeli political scene.

This may prove of minor benefit to Labor, which is trolling new lows in public opinion polls. The ascension of Livni to the Kadima leadership was a disaster for Labor, given her effective co-option of Labor positions on the Palestinian peace process and greater personal appeal in comparison with the widely disliked Barak.

Memories of the latter's poor domestic stewardship and of the disastrous 2000 Camp David and Sheperdstown peace talks are likely to encourage many floating centrist voters to again cast their ballots for Kadima.

Unless Barak experiences an unexpected surge in popularity, polls showing Livni squeaking a narrow electoral victory over Netanyahu, who remains a deeply divisive figure loathed by the left, will also bolster support for Kadima to the detriment of Labor.

To Inbar the upcoming elections are crucial to Labor's "survival as a major force in Israeli politics."

Referring to the Labor leader's previous political machinations, he said, "I think that Barak basically made a mistake in pushing Kadima to choose a successor to Olmert rather than going for elections [immediately] and leaving Kadima in a shambles."

For those parties receiving the bulk of their support from the Arab-Israeli sector - Hadash, Ra'am-Ta'al and Balad - the failure of Livni to meet with them or to consider relying on their support for a governing majority was a further, if entirely predictable, blow.

"She could have received their support. It exposes the second class [status] of the Arabs according to the Israeli view; that you don't even consider them as partners in a coalition. It shows the moral bankruptcy in the Israeli political system," Gordon opined.

Sitting pretty

Despite Kadima ending a long run of Likud poll predominance this week, stretching back to the 2006 Lebanon War, Netanyahu remains in a strong position looking ahead to the elections. Even if he does not snare the premiership, the Likud leader will almost certainly succeed in significantly bolstering his party's parliamentary representation.

Asked what Netanyahu, who is known for untimely gaffes has to do to win, Inbar said, "Primarily to minimize his mistakes because his chances are pretty good."

The Likud stands to gain from tensions between Labor and Kadima, which reemerged this week with jousting over the API.

As the Revisionist party seeks to revive support in the political center, ructions in the hard-right NRP/National Union and a spike in settler violence in the West Bank will continue to ease pressure on the Likud to assume hard-line Greater Israel stances, increasingly anathema to the centrist voting public.

Shas' version of Peres' 1990 "stinking maneuver" is unlikely to affect its parliamentary representation. Inbar believes "Shas has built a constituency over the years, which is going to vote for [the party]. By promoting themselves as the defenders of Jerusalem that will only help them."

Campaign foci

Sources in her camp tell ISN Security Watch that Livni will be premising her upcoming election campaign on her image as an uncorrupted politician.

Asked if Israeli voters would be swayed at the polls by this approach, Gordon said, "Maybe there is a yearning among certain segments of the population to try to overcome that [corruption]. There are other segments that I think are already in despair and do not think that can be overcome."

Both Gordon and Inbar agree that the global economic crisis is likely to have a significant if unclear political impact. With Barak's defeat of Amir Peretz for the Labor chairmanship there is now little difference between the leadership of the three major parties on economic policy, though Barak has sought some leeway in campaigning through excoriating the "piggish capitalism of the Right."

Nevertheless, "What is clear is that he [Netanyahu] knows this economic crisis can hurt him because he wanted the deregulation of the banks and so forth, and wanted to put the [public sector] pensions in the stock-market," Gordon said.

"So what he is going to highlight in the upcoming election is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," he said, noting that the Hamas takeover of Gaza and the perceived threat posed by Iran will help Netanyahu in shifting the campaign discourse.

Uncertainty

With the Israeli electorate increasingly characterized by a large, floating and increasingly apolitical center, there is significant room for both shifts in popular support in intervening months (three and a half months is a lifetime in Israeli politics) and for the emergence of a new protest party – with the Greens perhaps likely to win significant support and the party's first Knesset representation.

"I think that what we see in western countries we also see in Israel, although Israelis are still more political and more involved in the electoral process than other Western countries," Inbar said.

"In terms of the middle class, they don't care, they want to have parking in Tel Aviv," Gordon avers.

None of the major parties is likely to emerge with the type of popular mandate enjoyed by recent Likud-led governments and the outgoing Kadima administration, a fact that looks set to encourage an extensive period of post-election political horse-trading and the subsequent formation of a fragile governing coalition unlikely to see out its term in office.

With trust in the political system at an all-time low and issues of war and peace likely to feature less prominently than in the past, despite rightist parties' fixations on the future of Jerusalem, a low voter turnout can be expected.

This promotes the further fragmentations and instability of the Knesset and undermines both domestic efforts to ride out the global economic crisis and wider Israeli diplomatic initiatives.

Ultimately, winning the 2009 election may prove the easiest challenge facing the premiership aspirants.