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Acting PM Ehud Olmert during the weekly cabinet meeting, Sunday. (AP)
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The leader of the Israeli Likud Party and former Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, pauses at a party conference. (AP)
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Labor Party leader Amir Peretz. (AP)
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| By Associated Press March 12, 2006 |
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Israel's March 28 election has all the makings of high drama: party splits, Ariel Sharon's devastating stroke, Islamic militants voted into power by the Palestinians.
So why, in a country of high emotions and loud opinions, has the campaign been such a snoozer?
Mostly it's because a new paradigm has replaced the traditional left-right divide, and Israelis are flocking to Kadima, a new centrist party which they view as best equipped to meet their desire to separate from the Palestinians.
With elections more than two weeks away, things could still change. In the past, Palestinian attacks close to election day have swung votes, usually to the right.
But so far, opinion polls are nearly static.
The political season got off to a heated start in early November when a fiery Moroccan-born union leader, Amir Peretz, wrested power from his Labor Party's European-descended elite. Less than two weeks later, Prime Minister Sharon delivered an even bigger jolt by breaking with his Likud Party, and its policy of vastly expanding Israel's borders, to form Kadima (Forward). Sharon had just pulled Israel out of the Gaza Strip, and was widely thought to be planning to give up chunks of the West Bank as well.
Kadima immediately took a commanding lead in surveys and reduced the long-ruling Likud to a distant third, after Labor. The new balance of power has barely shifted, even after Sharon, Israel's most popular politician, was rendered comatose by a stroke Jan. 4 and Hamas militants upset peacemaking prospects by sweeping Palestinian elections three weeks later.
Pollster Mina Zemach of the Dahaf Research Institute said dramatic events like Sharon's illness and Hamas' election victory ordinarily would cause big swings in surveys. Not this time, she told Israel's Army Radio.
Political scientist Michael Keren attributes the stability to the realignment in Israeli politics.
Israelis used to vote left or right, often based on ethnic or religious affiliations, Keren said. Now the fault line divides the electorate into those who want to separate from the Palestinians unilaterally, and those he calls "vision people" - leftists who favor a negotiated land-for-peace deal as well as rightists who want to hold on to territory Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war.
In withdrawing from Gaza and becoming the first Israeli leader to cede lands that Palestinians claim for a state, Sharon embedded the idea of "disengagement" in Israeli minds.
"People are looking at things in terms of disengagement," Keren said. "Polls show ... that about 50 percent of those who say they will vote support disengagement, whether they're leftists or rightists."
Ehud Olmert, the man most likely to be Israel's next prime minister, clearly senses the trend, and has been promising to act on it, telling Israeli media last week that he wants to declare Israel's permanent borders by 2010 - borders which will render the Jewish state "completely separate from the majority of the Palestinian population."
Olmert's candor is widely seen as an attempt to shore up Kadima's poll results, which lately have shown minor slippage, even though it's still projected to win 38 of the 120 seats in the parliament, while Labor would win about 19 and Likud 17. That would give Olmert first crack at forming a coalition with smaller parties.
The public moved to the center long before Sharon formed Kadima, and that's why the centrist party he formed wasn't rocked by his illness, said Reuven Hazan, a professor of political science at Hebrew University.
The center's allure has grown because the "old left" and the "old right" didn't supply answers to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Hazan said.
"The left's policy of outstretched arm, we'll negotiate, make concessions, sign agreements, work together to fight terror - you can't sell it," he said.
At the same time, the demographic realities of ruling a large Palestinian population have sunk in, he said. Most Israelis want a Jewish, democratic state, Hazan said, but if it has a large, voteless Arab populace it won't be democratic, and if it gives the Arabs the vote it will cease to be Jewish.
Campaign ads that hit the airwaves Tuesday signaled that the race was in its last stretch, but the difference from past elections is noticeable. Parties that used to count on young volunteers to hand out party flyers are now paying workers to do it.
However, the balance can still be tipped.
Kadima's slippage stems from corruption allegations against senior members, including Olmert.
According to Zemach, the pollster, 10 percent of voters surveyed said they are undecided, but 20 percent of those who have decided said they could still change their minds.
Sociologist Yochanan Peres doesn't foresee significant swings.
"Why is the campaign so quiet? Because the political energy looking for change is best realized in the formation of Kadima, and because of the huge electoral resonance it has created," he said.
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