Think tank sees right turn for Israel, increased tension with U.S.
Friday, February 13, 2009 E-Mail this story Free Headline Alerts
TEL AVIV Ñ An Israeli strategic institute said the Jewish state could evolve into a "one-block state" led by a dominant conservative coalition.
The report, based on the results of Israel's Knesset elections on Feb. 10, said more than 60 percent of the electorate voted for nationalist and religious parties.
"The election result this week confirms the emergence of a one-block, right-of-center dominant political reality in Israel; a fact that is likely to dominate for many years to come," the report by the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies said.
Titled "Israel in 2009: A One-Block State of the Right," the report said the dominance of the right-wing could end more than 15 years of international peace efforts between Israel and the Palestinians. As a result, author Hillel Frisch said, an Israeli electoral majority opposed to a Palestinian state could spark a crisis with the United States.
"The one-block, right-wing-dominant state could have major bearing on Israel's relations with the United States," the report said. "Tensions can be expected between an Obama administration that has announced its intention to refocus on Israeli-Palestinian peace, and a Likud-led government."
The report said the two leading candidates, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, chairman of the ruling Kadima, and Likud challenger Binyamin Netanyahu, committed strategic mistakes in their campaign by failing to understand the transformation of the electorate. Ms. Livni party won 28 seats in the 120-member Knesset, at least one more than Netanyahu, but was said to lack partners to form a coalition majority.
"Kadima's electoral achievement is ephemeral; it masks the deeper and much more enduring socio-political ascendancy of the political right, both nationalist and religious," the report said. "Both Livni and Netanyahu failed to sufficiently appreciate this reality, and as a result, made strategic campaign mistakes."
The new right-wing majority was said to espouse positions similar to that of the Labor Party before the Israeli agreement with the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1993. Frisch, a senior research associate, said the majority was formed by nearly a decade of Palestinian violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
"Netanyahu thus deserves a failing grade for strategic acumen, a worrisome failure for Israel's likely prime minister," the report said. "Livni also made the strategic mistake of writing off the religious public, and by so doing, strengthened the center-right and religious alliance that has dominated Israel for most of the past 25 years."
Still, Frisch said the emerging right-wing majority in Israel would not result in a major shift in relations with either its Arab neighbors or the United States. He said the Obama administration, despite pledges of renewing Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts, would soon become preoccupied in trying to reconcile the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip with the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.
"The Obama administration will soon realize that the Hamas-Fatah civil war makes anything other than conflict management unattainable," the report said. "Therefore, Israel and the United States should get along fine, albeit, bumpily. In any case, both will be absorbed by their common major concern -- preventing a nuclear Iran. To meet that threat, a one-block dominant right-wing government in Israel is as good as any other."