Middle East
Israeli Elections
'No Time for Celebrations'
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| Likud supporters cheer the results of the Israeli election, Jan. 28, 2003 (Photo: Menahem Kahana/AFP). |
“Sharon Won—the Left Has Collapsed,” was the headline on the front page of Tel Aviv's centrist Yediot Aharonot on Jan. 29, the day after Israel held its third election in three and a half years. No words could better describe what happened. “It will be a victory,” Yossi Verter had predicted in Tel Aviv's liberal Ha'aretz a day before the election, “But the victor will not be celebrating.” He may be right.
At 68 percent, voter turnout was the lowest in history—1.5 million eligible Israelis didn't vote. As one television commentator put it, Israelis believed these elections were forced on them and so stayed away, preferring the beach to the ballots. “Israelis are fed up with being forced to cast their vote every year and a half,” Alon Goldstein agreed in Tel Aviv's centrist Yediot Aharonot. In previous elections, Israelis felt that they still could bring about change, wrote Orna Landau in the same paper. “Now, because everybody believes in the same things and because everybody knows that nothing is in their hands anymore, nor in the hands of [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon or [Labor party leader Amram] Mitzna, they decided to stay home….The failure of Camp David [in 2000], and the Al-Aqsa Intifada that followed did not just kill the peace process, it also killed the belief in democracy as a system where a vote has meaning and can have an influence. If Israelis could have voted in the Palestinian elections, they would have turned out in droves.”
Lev Greenberg, writing in the same newspaper, simply seemed annoyed: “There was no reason to hold elections. In a working democracy, elections are held in regular intervals, or when the government fails or falls.”
Other precedents were set in this election: This was the first time since 1981 that a prime minister who had called for early elections won. And it was the first time in 20 years that a prime minister was elected twice in a row.
Yet even Sharon seemed to be in a glum mood. “Today is no time for celebrations,” he said in his victory speech. “This is a time for soul-searching, for coming together in unity, for fusing all forces to bring about a genuine victory.”
Hardly the speech of a man who had just won a landslide victory. Likud won 38 seats in the Knesset, up from 19 in 1999; Labor won 19, down from 26 in 1999; Shinui won 15 seats, up from 6 in 1999; Shas lost six seats, winning only 11; and Meretz received 6 seats, down from 10 in 1999. Interestingly, Likud was proportionately less favored among soldiers, whereas the “Green Leaf” party, which promotes the legalization of marijuana, made gains.
“Israelis voted Sharon,” Arie Shavit concluded in the Jan. 29 Yediot Aharonot, “as a show of contempt to Labor, but they also voted against Oslo.” Gal Ochovski added in the same paper: “Most Israelis suffer from the [security] situation to the point that they have lost their patience. They want a forceful solution that even if unsuccessful won't leave them standing in the rain.”
“The people are not stupid,” Dan Shilon, Israel's most famous TV talk show host, observed pessimistically in the same edition. “The people wanted Sharon, the people got Sharon, and they got a lot of him…. Sharon wasn’t here the past two years. It wasn’t he who failed to stop terrorism, it wasn't he who blocked a settlement with the Palestinians, it wasn’t he who sent thousands to the unemployment line…. This is the dawn of a new morning, as we awake to the chorus of ‘Arik [Sharon’s nickname], King of Israel’….Sharon will continue to rule, terror will increase, peace will die, the economy will collapse, corruption will spread. But in a year or two, the people will again hail Sharon—or his successor, Netanyahu.”
Many commentators felt that no one won in this election, which Michal Kapra, writing for the Jan. 29 edition of Tel Aviv's centrist Ma'ariv dismissively called “a chapter in a sad Latin American soap opera.” According to Kapra, voter apathy, the right’s ascent, and Labor’s decline were results of a malaise that has gripped the country since the collapse of the Oslo accords and the Al-Aqsa Intifada.
“The voters played the old game,” Meir Shelo explained in Yediot Aharonot. “The Israeli electorate always votes against something, never for something, always because of yesterday, and never with a look ahead…. Nobody voted for a separation fence, for a social state, for transfer, for annexation, for retreating from the territories…. We voted against the orthodox, against the secularists, against the elite… against the Ashkenazim, against the kibbutz movement, against the settlements, against the Arabs, against the Jews…. We voted that way, because the real discourse in Israel—as in every family—is never about the future but about what happened. We don’t punish the guilty and get rid of the one who brought us to where we are.… We voted to keep on arguing…. We voted and now we can sit back; soon there will be elections again.”
The tremendous gains Tommy Lapid’s secularist Shinui party, which puts domestic reforms above foreign policy, opened a new chapter in domestic politics. Kobi Arieli, writing for Yediot Aharonot, was puzzled by their success. “I am dying to get to know somebody who voted for Shinui,” Arieli wrote. “Who is he? What does he believe in? Is he to the left or to the right? …Who the hell votes Shinui? Are there people in this country who don’t have a political opinion?"
Labor’s defeat had been expected, but the left lost more support than anyone had anticipated. Ma’ariv’s Jan. 29 editorial proclaimed that “Labor is coming apart.” “Labor must remember that their responsibility equals the importance of the role mandated to the Likud,” Ha’aretz’s editors admonished the same day. “[Labor politicians must] stick to their platform, use it to undermine government policies and persuade the public…. Their approach offers an alternative that far better serves the national interest.”
Matti Golan, writing for Tel Aviv's financial Globes, saw a bright future for Labor in a new coalition with Likud. “Labor, despite its loss of power, was handed an opportunity to bring about a historical change in the country: The party can influence the government to restart a dialogue with the Palestinians in search of a political solution. Also—and not less importantly—Labor can grab the opportunity and be part of a secular government, without the religious and orthodox parties.”
Not so fast, warned Dubi Kannengiesser in the Jan. 29 edition of the news Web site Ha'eyal Hakoreh. “Labor is trapped in a classic Catch-22: The party is torn between its electoral role of being part of the opposition and its ideological interest to help formulate a moderate policy within a government that is not held hostage by the dictates of the far right…. Sharon, in his infinite wisdom, has left the future of the country in the hands of Mitzna, Peres, and Lapid. They will decide what the next government will look like.”
Sharon, for his part, has opened the way for Labor to join the government. Immediately after the results came in, he declared that he favored a "unity government" with Labor and/or Shinui over a narrow right-wing coalition. If Sharon fails in this attempt, he might call for new elections. The reason is pragmatic, Israeli commentators said; Sharon fears for his own political survival.
“A government without the protective vest of [former Israeli Labor Foreign Minister Shimon] Peres and [former Israeli Labor Defense Minister Benjamin] Ben-Eliezer will put a different Sharon on display before the world,” Yossi Verter argued in the Election Day edition of Ha'aretz. “The White House won’t smile so much in Sharon’s direction, and Europe will lock its gates to him. The Palestinian conflict could get worse…. The large opposition in the Knesset will make Sharon's life miserable…. Ministers will not be able to travel overseas… because they will need to be present to repel no-confidence notions.”
Yediot Aharonot also pointed to dangers lurking in Likud’s tremendous electoral gain. Likud can “strike the Palestinians to its heart’s content, to the point of exiling or killing Arafat,” the paper’s Jan. 29 editorial commented. Still, Yediot’s editors wrote, Likud is afraid: “Likud has rushed to call on the defeated Labor leadership, almost begging them to join them.” The reason for this strange phenomenon, the paper suggested, could be that "Sharon is scared of the possible results of enacting his policies…. Likud is afraid of Labor [politicians] in the opposition, rubbing their hands and saying: ‘Let’s see how you pull through.’ ”
The day before, Yossi Verter had made a similar point in Ha’aretz: “Likud fears its victory more than Labor fears its defeat. Likud simply doesn’t know what to do in victory without Labor. So, the day after the elections, the defeated party will become a target of stubborn courtship by the prime minister…as [he tries] to woo Labor into a unity government.”
By Jan. 30, it looked like their predictions were coming true. Ma’ariv’s banner headline read, “Sharon: I will not form a right-wing government.” And a second headline in fat letters over a quarter of the front page announced: “Likud is waiting for a revolt within Labor.”
No matter what government Sharon eventually cobbles together, it will face daunting political and domestic tasks. Labor and Likud will both have to redefine themselves. “The right must...explain and pursue what it stands for,” an editorial in the conservative Jerusalem Post argued the day after the election. “It must do so on the diplomatic, economic, and social front. The question at this point is how Sharon can use his mandate to recapture the initiative for Middle East diplomacy.” The same day, an editorial in Tel Aviv’s religious, right-wing Hatzofeh added, “The electorate delivered a harsh blow to the left; it is up to Sharon to prove that the right embraces a platform and a program for all areas of life.”
If he doesn’t, Ha’aretz’s Gideon Samet warned, “he'll drag the country into political and economic trouble that will make the crises of 2001-02 look like a picnic…. The national hourglass is running out…the great absurdity of [the election results] is that Sharon has become the only alternative to himself. If he refuses to present it, he won’t preside over a government that he can rule. Is this possible? No. Then try to get through the coming year somehow. Afterward, either there will be a change in government at another ballot box, or catastrophe—whichever comes first.”
“What will get us out of this mess?” asked Zvi Lavi in the Jan. 29 Globes. “In this theater of the absurd,” Lavi wrote, “Only a war with Iraq will. A threat against Israel will bring about an emergency government. After they learn how to live with each other, maybe it’ll be difficult for them to separate. We already have an excuse for this scenario: Aren’t we always knee-deep in an emergency situation?”
