the communists are coming!

Three things to watch in the municipal election this Tuesday:

1. Tel Aviv: Mayor Ron Huldai is running for a third term after 10 years in office, backed by both Kadima and Labor parties. On the previous election Huldai won in a landslide without really campaigning, but public opinion of him has changed in the last two years. Huldai has failed to address the problem of raising rent and further worsened the situation for himsels by declaring that this was a normal result of the free market. Tel Aviv during his time in office became so attractive, he claimed, that everyone wanted to live in it. Huldai, a former pilot for the Air Force, who became a national figure as the successful principal of one of the city's most prestigious high schools, has also made some unpopular decisions, such as taking down the legendary Osishkin basketball arena, home of Hapoel Tel Aviv, the second most popular team in the city.

   His surprising challenger is MK Dov Khenin of Hadash, the radical left wing party. Khenin has built an Obama-like coalition of representatives from the poor neighborhoods in the south of the city, and the young students, journalists and bohemian crowd from the city center. Khenin is the grandson of an important Chabad rabbi, and was the former chairman of the “Environment and Life” organization, which amalgamates most of the environmental organizations in Israel.

The polls gave Huldai a 20 plus points advantage just a month ago, but the race has tightened since and the margin is considered to be in the high single digit area. Still, even the slight chance that a communist like Khenin will lead Israel's cultural and financial capital is surprising, to say the least, considering the current political atmosphere.

My prediction: Huldai, by a margin of 15 points or more.

2. Jerusalem: Israel's bankrupt capital presents its next mayor with too many challenges: the population is poor, most of the secular elite and business people have long fled the city, and the Palestinians on the east side are getting more and more hostile (it's no surprise: Israel has made everything in its power to make their lives miserable). Still, being the mayor of one of the worlds most holly and well known cities carries some prestige; so three men are actually running for the post.

   Reb Uri Lupoliansky, the city's first Hasidic mayor, is not running for re-election. The front runner in the polls is the secular right-wing leaning businessman Nir Barkat, who had until recently a 15 points advantage over ultra-orthodox MK Meir Porush. It was supposed to be an easy one for Barkat, since some important rabbis have opposed Porush's candidacy publicly. But Barkat has alienated the few liberal seculars left in the city with his anti Arab rhetoric, and Porush has gained some momentum. The eccentric millionaire Arkady Gaidamak is also running, and might hurt Barkat even further with the secular vote.

   My prediction: Porush will turn out to be the surprise of this election, winning the capitol with a narrow margin.

3. The Green Party: The municipal election in Israel is a split vote: you cast one vote for the mayor and another for a party to be elected for the city council. The ecological ideology, once totally foreign to Israeli discourse, has continuously been gaining ground, and the Greens are now expected to get 2-3 MK for the first time in the general election. Could the Green Party be “the default vote” for the city council this Tuesday for those interested only in the race for the mayoral position?

   My prediction: The Greens will have a good day, especially on the northern suburbs of Tel Aviv (though not in Tel Aviv itself, where Khenin's party, “city for all of us” – the name doesn't sound better in Hebrew – will carry most of the ecological vote). It will be also interesting to watch Avigdor Liberman's “Israel Beitenu” performance tomorrow. The party chose to go with a national campaign, presenting only Liberman's picture and non of the municipal candidates. I think Liberman might perform well in the mixed cities.

   As for myself, I will vote for Dov Khenin for mayor of Tel Aviv and Meretz for city council.

Campaign to the Right, Rule to the Left

The right wing smells blood. While the left and center parties are sitting still, wondering what will be the main issue of the upcoming general election (the economy? The peace process? government corruption?) on the right, new parties are being born and retired politicians along with their retired ideas are coming back from the cold, as if the year was 1998. The reason is simple: everybody reads the polls - predicting more than 30 MKs to the Likud and between 60 to 70 MKs to the right block - and everyone wants in.

In the Likud the big news are the return of Bennie Begin (son of the late PM Menachem Begin) who left the Netanyahu government angrily in 1997, in account of the Hebron accord. Begin said some harsh things about Netanyahu (“If I had to chose who to believe, Bibi or [MK Ahmed] Tibi, I'd have no reason to prefer the former”), but the electoral promise of this election presented him with an opportunity even he couldn't resist. Begin is an asset to the Likud, no doubt. He's remembered as a “clean” and honest politician, untainted by the Sharon-Olmert politics of recent years. However, his radical hawkish views might present Netanyahu with a problem later on.

Another new member of the Likud is Brigadier General Miri Regev, former spokeswoman of the IDF. The public opinion on her is mixed at best, because Regev is identified with the failure of the second Lebanon war. Another retired Brigadier General who expressed his will to join the Likud is MK Effi Eitam, who was elected to the Knesset as part of the radical Ihud Leumi Party. Eitam might bring Netanyahu a few votes from the right, but he also presents him with a problem – a Likud with Eitam will make it easier on Labor and Kadima to portray it as an extreme Right-wing party, making it lose ground in the center of the political map. This problem might be solved by a possible endorsement by Yuval Rabin, which was reported in the Israeli media this week. Yuval Rabin is the son of the late PM and hero of “the peace camp” Itzhak Rabin, and the perfect candidate to clear Netanyahu of any radical image.

Altogether, I believe Netanyahu has learned the lesson of his miserable first term in the prime minister office. He knows that in Israel you have to campaign to the right and rule to the left. Right-wing coalitions can't survive: the minute the PM starts any sort of peace talks, his partners will bring him down. It happened to Yitzhak Shamir, to Ariel Sharon (who lost control over his own Likud party) and to Netanyahu himself. This time, It is more than likly that Netanyahu will try to build a coalition with Kadima and even Labor. But first he has to win the election.

Israel Beitenu is the other emerging power on the Right. Its leader, Avigdor Liberman, promotes what looks like the only solution the Right has to offer to the Palestinian problem: he is willing to accept a Palestinian state in the West Bank on one condition – an exchange of territories that will keep the big settlements under Israeli regime, while including in the Palestinian state a few Arab cities which are currently within the Israeli borders. Liberman is a dangerous man: his ideas harvest hatred between Jews and Arabs. He makes many Israelis delegitimize the Arab-Israeli citizens and their rights. He also has the habit of making insulting remarks and even threats towards Arab leaders in the region. With the current nationalistic and even racist atmosphere in Israel, he is getting stronger and I believe he can achieve up to 15 MKs in the next Knesset. It will be hard for him to go beyond that: he is a Russian immigrant, and racism works in many ways.

The rise of Liberman should also worry the Ihud Leumi party (the name means “national unity” in Hebrew). Ihud Leumi was a coalition of four extreme Right wing, mostly religious, parties: Mafdal (the national religious front), Tkuma, Moledet and a party of former Mafdal members. All four have decided last week to unite completely. Currently they are searching for a new name, and a national figure to lead them after Effi Eitam had left them (they weren't too happy with him anyway). The fact that another MK has left and formed his own party – MK Arie Eldad – won't make life easier on them either. “The ideological Right” - as all these movements are sometimes referred to – is experiencing problems gaining ground with mainstream secular voters. I see it as part of the crisis in the religious right and the settlement movement; Maybe I'll elaborate on this issue in the future.

As for the two Hasidic parties on the Right block – Shas and Yahadut Hatorah - nothing major is happening with them lately. Shas is running a bit low in the polls (around 10 MKs), and from what I gather, they are having problems with the secular Sepharadic public who used to vote for them in great numbers. But as I wrote before, Shas always under performs in the polls.

Update: Yuval Rabin was on “Meet the Press” on channel 2 today, just hours before the annual memorial service commemorating his father at Rabin square. He didn't deny the reports on him considering to endors Netanyahu, but avoided declaring any final decision. When asked how could he possibly support the man who played such a major role in spreading hate against his father and creating the atmosphere that led to his murder, Rabin answered that “things have changed”. Indeed they have.

Update #2: Dan Meridor, a highly popular former MK and minister for the Likud, who left the party because of differences with Netanyahu, announced his return to the Likud. Things are looking good for Bibi.

today's poll, 27.10

The paper I work for, Maariv, published the first poll for the upcoming election. Here are the results:

Kadima: 31 Members of Knesset

Likud: 29 MKs

Israel Beitenu (Avigdor Liberman’s party), Labor, Arab Parties (Hadash + Balad + Raa’m): 11 MKs each

Shas (Sephardic orthodox): 8 MKs

Ihud Leumi (the right wing front): 7 MKs

Meretz (left wing liberal party): 5 MKs

Yahadut Hatorah (Ashkenazi orthodox): 4 MKs

Green Party (not present in the current Knesset): 3 MKs

The magic number in the Knesset is 60 (out of 120 seats). This poll gives the center-left (Kadima + Labor + Meretz + Arabs + Green) a block of 61 MKs, meaning Tzipi Livni will have the upper hand in the battle to form the next government.

However, there are a few things to consider:

First, the left and center usually underperform in the election (or, more accurately, over perform in the polls), and given the current political atmosphere, it is hard to see Livni get over the 30 mark, which is still better than Ehud Olmert did.

Second, Shas hasn’t gotten bellow 10 since the 1992 election, and it's not going to happen this time either.

Third, Liberman hasn't reached his full potential, which should be around 14-15 MK. With his anti Arab rhetoric, he has the ability to take votes not only from Likud, but also from Kadima and even Labor.

If I had to guess today, I would estimate the right-religious block crossing the 60, even by as much as 5-6 seats. But we still have a lot of time before the election. For now, it’s clear that Livni is going into the campaign much stronger than one could expect, given her failure to form a government.

By the way, the same pollster (Teleseker) just ran a survey in Israel on the upcoming US presidential election. The winner: John McCain, by a 12% margin. Exactly as in Texas.

again

So, it's election time in Israel. Again.

As expected, Tzipi Livni informed president Peres today that she was unable to form a coalition, and though Peres may give another MK a chance to do so, it is more likely that we will have a general election in the beginning of 2009, probably in February.

The truth is Livni didn't have a chance to begin with: she couldn't form a left-center government because Shaul Mofaz and the right wing of Kadima would veto it, and a center government with Shas was just too expensive. Shas was asking for too much: expensive financial support for Hasidic families, and a veto on any negotiations with the Palestinians regarding Jerusalem. The reality is that Shas just didn't want to form this government. Its leader, Eliy Yishay, would rather have an election now, because in less than a year Aryeh Deri, the former leader of the party who was indicted in court and banned from political life, will be able to run for office again.

But are the elections good news, and for whom? The right wing, both here and in the US, is celebrating. They feared a Livni government that would move forward in the peace process, possibly even on both fronts – Syria and the Palestinians. They also believe that with Netanyahu riding high in the polls, they have a fare chance of forming a stable center-right coalition. Netanyahu believes that together with Liberman the extreme “Ichud Leumi - Madal” party and the religious parties, he will have a block of more than 60 MK (which makes half of the parliament), and than he can force Kadima, and even Labor, into his government, giving it the necessary stability and international credibility.

However, it is not very likely that Netanyahu's victory will be THAT big, and then he will be confronted with two options: a right wing government that will provoke international pressure, or a center government that would demand moving forward in the peace process. And then what? I really think Netanyahu doesn't know. My impression is that he doesn't have a serious idea as to what to do with the West Bank. Nobody in the right wing – with the possible exception of Liberman – has. Like Shamir, Sharon and even Netanyahu himself on his last visit to the PM office, if he does nothing, the world and the left will pressure him, and when he start negotiating, the right wing will get him.

In other words, there is no escaping two fundamental facts about our politics:

The first: the Palestinian problem is the basic element that shapes the political dynamics in Israel. It can not be avoided, and even confronting it won't save you sometimes.

The second: the current political system does not allow the government to really rule. All the PM does, from his first day in office, is maintaining jobs for his coalition.

That's why we had five general elections in ten years (including the 2001 special election and the upcoming 2009 election). I can't see any reason for the fate of the new government to be any different from that of previous ones.

Israeli mood

If there is an effective currency in Israeli politics today, it's Racism. Not any racism – PC does apply when it comes to Jews – but racism against Arabs. That's why it shouldn't come as a surprise that the mayor of Acre, Shimon Lankri, has declared in a synagogue on the holyday of Simchat Torah, that "Acre belongs to us, and will remain ours forever and ever". By "us" he was referring to the Jews of this mixed city.

Acre has seen five days of clashes between Arabs and Jews two weeks ago, and obviously, Mr. Lankri adopted the right wing narrative of the events, interpreting them as part of an organized Arab effort to take over Jewish land and houses, or in more common words, "to drive us into the sea". This statement shouldn't come as a surprise, considering the fact that Mr. Lankri has already decided to punish the Arab population of his city by cancelling the Acre theatre festival last week, "to let things calm down" (the festival takes place in the old city of Acre, which is populated mostly by Arabs. It makes the best week in the year for most of the businesses there).

Mr. Lankri is not Liberman. He is a member of Kadima, which is supposed to be a center party. In his actions, he represent the consensus in Israel today, a consensus which allows you to say or do just about anything to Arabs, and not only won't the public opinion punish you, you might even score some points.

Racism is present in Israel not only in politics but in everyday life. There are organizations calling to boycott Arab businesses, there are racist songs during football matches, and you can find racist graffiti just about everywhere. It even happens in liberal Tel Aviv: A few years ago I was working on one of the holiday editions of my paper. The cover story was supposed to be an interview with a Palestinian woman. Just as we were about to send the paper to print, one of the editors in chief of the paper came to see our first page. "What's that", he shouted. "That's what you are you're giving the Jewish people on Rosh Hashanah? A picture of an Arab with rotten yellow teeth? Nobody wants so see an ugly Arab on their front page on Rosh Hashanah".

We changed the cover story.

Racism in Israel is so dangerous today, because it's a combination of "street level" talk with a growing elite of right wing and centrist writers, politicians and journalists, who regard the Arab citizens of the state as its number one problem. This combination is what makes Liberman ride high in the Polls. The weird thing is that most of this is unknown to the rest of the world. Sure, people hear about the west bank and Gaza, but inside the 48' borders (what we call "the green line"), Israel is still the picture perfect democracy. Israeli lobbying groups in the US and Europe actually say again and again how wonderful life is for the Arab-Israelis in the only democracy in the middle east, and nobody seems to dispute them.

Maybe they should consider inviting Mr. Lankri to one of their events.