Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

The Israeli election

The lowest turnout in Israel's history suggests that voters didn't think much was at stake in Tuesday's election. The outcome, however, brought some encouraging news, even if it was not a political earthquake. It was a modest victory for the new centrist Kadima Party founded by Ariel Sharon, the prime minister incapacitated since suffering a stroke in January, and its new leader, Ehud Olmert.

Kadima won fewer seats than expected, but the vote signaled that Israelis - at least those who bothered to vote - support further withdrawals of Jewish settlers from the occupied West Bank following Sharon's unilateral disengagement from Gaza last summer. Likud, the right-wing party of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that takes a hard line against further withdrawals, suffered a humiliating defeat in the voting.

Kadima won 28 seats in the 120-member parliament, fewer than the 35 it expected but enough for Olmert, who is likely to be the new prime minister, to put together a centrist coalition with Labor and some of the small parties that focused on social and domestic issues in the campaign. Olmert said only parties that support the Sharon-inspired withdrawal plan will be invited to join the governing coalition. Though Olmert said he was willing to work with the Palestinians to reshape Israel's borders by 2010, he also made it clear that he is prepared, if necessary, to move unilaterally to define Israel's border and security arrangements, the most contentious issues of any two-state deal.

Everyone knows that a negotiated solution to the settlement problem is far more likely to lead to a peaceful future than Israeli unilateralism, which is not likely to satisfy either the Israeli right or the Palestinians. But the problem for now is that Israel does not have a negotiating partner on the Palestinian side. Olmert is not going to deal with the new Palestinian government led by Hamas, a terrorist group that so far has refused to repudiate terrorism or recognize Israel's right to exist.

It's probably a good time for both the Israelis and the Palestinians to pause and think before making their next move.

[Last modified April 1, 2006, 00:55:17]