Israel's uncertain revolution

Tuesday's general election was one of the most momentous in Israel's 58-year history. So why didn't the voters care?

By Aluf Benn

Read more: Palestine, Politics, Israel, Elections, News, Ehud Olmert

AP Photo/Kevin Frayer

Acting Israeli Prime Minister and Kadima Party leader Ehud Olmert celebrates his party's victory in general elections early Wednesday, March 29, 2006.

March 31, 2006 | TEL AVIV, Israel -- Tuesday's general election was one of the most dramatic in Israel's 58-year history, marking important turning points in its political map, leadership and policies. A new party, Kadima, barely three months old, won the popular vote by a slim plurality after committing itself to withdrawing Israel's forces and settlements from most of the West Bank. The Labor Party, which finished second to become Kadima's most likely coalition partner, has vowed to reconstruct Israel's welfare state, rejecting its recent capitalist, market-economy orientation. Both Kadima, led by acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and the revived Labor defeated the Likud, the former leading party.

Yet "the big bang," as Israelis have termed their political rearrangement, has left the public indifferent. Despite a string of surprising events -- the incapacitation of Ariel Sharon, the popular prime minister, the Hamas victory in the Palestinian election -- the campaign never caught fire with the public, and voter turnout was the lowest in any parliamentary election in Israel's history. The big surprise of Election Day was the success of the new Pensioners Party, which attracted many young voters disillusioned with a "corrupt system" where "all politicians are the same." The Pensioners, led by a former spymaster with a colorful history, flew below the radar of pollsters and journalists to win seven seats in the 120-member Knesset.

More than anything, Tuesday's election was a national referendum over two issues: an unexpected leadership change, and the execution of Sharon's political will. Almost without noticing it, Israel's ruling team went through a series of monumental personal, generational and character changes. Sharon, the erstwhile war hero, hard-line "bulldozer" and settlement builder who changed his heart while at the national helm, suffered a severe brain hemorrhage on Jan. 4, which has left him comatose ever since in a Jerusalem hospital. His powers were immediately transferred to his loyal deputy, Ehud Olmert, who, unlike Sharon, was not one of the nation's founders. (Sharon was born in 1928 and fought in Israel's war of independence in 1948; Olmert was born in 1945.) And unlike Sharon, Yitzhak Rabin or Ehud Barak, all former generals who made it to the prime minister's bureau, Olmert has never had much of a military career at all, spending his life in the political corridors and as a lawyer, rather than at the battlefield. Olmert's second-in-command, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, comes from a similar civilian background, working as a real estate lawyer before joining politics a decade ago (although her father had been a famed operations officer in the pre-state Jewish underground, and she served several years as a junior officer in the Mossad intelligence agency.)

During his test run in the three months preceding the election, Olmert proved himself to be an able CEO for the country. As acting prime minister, his decision-making was reactive rather than proactive. Nevertheless, he responded relatively calmly to the Hamas victory, mindful of the international community's concerns. He did not hesitate to use force against Palestinian militants, and ordered the army to seize six "most wanted" Palestinians who were held at a Jericho prison. The six were under British supervision, and when their British wardens left, fearing the Hamas takeover, Israel arrested the prisoners -- including the assassins of a former Israeli minister -- in an almost bloodless operation earlier this month.

Olmert admires coolness as a key leadership trait, and throughout the campaign he was trying to run the country as smoothly as possible, without ballyhoo. The problem was that he failed to excite the voters. The same problems that made Olmert a political underdog in the past -- his image as a non-charismatic professional pol, clouded by a string of petty corruption allegations (he always came out clean) -- hurt his election bid as well. Kadima finished the contest with 29 Knesset seats, enough to win, but not to become a dominant ruling party.

When Sharon split the Likud last November, following his unilateral pullout of Israel's settlers from the Gaza strip, he had two goals: to keep the momentum of his Gaza withdrawal and fix Israel's borders, and to redraw the political map around a pivotal centrist block. Sharon was badly hurt by Likud infighting, which almost derailed his Gaza plan. In reaction, he wanted to weaken the strangling power of political parties, in order to create a stabler, more effective government. Initial polls gave Kadima around 40 votes, but in recent weeks, as the public digested the departure of its beloved leader, the party's edge eroded. Even the less optimistic Olmert, however, said after the election that he had expected to win 30 seats and was less than happy with the results.

If he were conscious, Sharon might have been happier with the crushing defeat of his former party. The Likud, which ran the country just months ago, ended up with only 12 seats, and its leader, Sharon's longtime rival and former Prime Minister Benjamin ("Bibi") Netanyahu, is now under pressure to resign. Bibi, a staunch opponent of West Bank withdrawal, hoped to use the rise of Hamas as his comeback card, as he tried to portray Olmert as a left-wing patsy of Islamic terrorists. The public, however, turned a deaf ear to the scary Likud propaganda. Most Israelis have grasped the fruitlessness of holding onto hilltop settlements stuck in the midst of Palestinian-populated areas. Moreover, the voters' main concern regarding the Palestinians is personal security. They want to be able to board a bus and get off in one piece, not be blown up by a suicide bomber. Therefore, they pay little attention to the composition of the Palestinian Parliament or cabinet. The lack of serious security incidents threw Bibi's campaign into irrelevance.

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