AxisMundi Jerusalem

An ageing body politic

The ageing executive body of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction is trying to emerge from its current congress in Bethlehem with a “new look” and a “new image”  – not easy when the youngest member of the executive is 70-years-old and the oldest 87.

“I am sorry. I have Alzheimers,” joked one Fatah member during the congress when he realised he had forgotten to bring the list of candidates that he was supposed to vote for in the group’s first get-together in 20 years.

Even the group’s one-time ’young guard’ has grown old between congresses.

One of the drivers working for a member of Fatah’s Central Committee told me that he was shocked (and a little amused) when he asked his elderly passenger for a destination expecting somewhere in Bethlehem or nearby Ramallah and was told to drive to Beirut.

Five posts of the Central Committe have remained vacant for the past two decades while members waited for this congress to elect a new committee.

On Sunday, the Congress voted to elect new members to the Central Committee in a bid to have a new Fatah that would strengthen the credentials of its leader Mahmoud Abbas. For full story click here.

About half the members of the Central Committee are seeking re-election, including Salim al-Zanoun, the 87-year-old man. For his sake, and for the faction’s, it is hoped the next Congress can be organised before 2030 or there might be a lot of seats coming vacant before the next round of elections.

Top job in the new government? No thanks!

By Tova Cohen

Though it’s considered one of the top three cabinet posts in Israel’s government,  in these troubled times there seems to be no takers in Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party for the job of finance minister, according to the Yedioth Ahronoth daily.

Netanyahu, who is in the process of putting together a government after last month’s general election, is seeking to give the finance post to someone in his own party, but senior members are reluctant to step into this “honey trap”, the country’s top selling daily reported.

“It’s not a secret that these days no one wants the Treasury,” the paper quoted a Likud member of parliament as saying. “Only a Shiite suicide (bomber) would take on this job. Everyone knows that Bibi ( Netanyahu) will rise or fall on the financial issues so who wants to get into this mess?”

A senior Likud member who has been mentioned as a possible candidate for finance minister was quoted as saying that if he took the post in these times, he would be a  “marked man”.

Two senior Likud members expecting ministerial positions in the new government have served as finance minister – Dan Meridor and Silvan Shalom. But they both are said to prefer the defence ministry to avoid having to deal with a looming recession and the global financial crisis.

Foreign Affairs

Israeli newspapers are abuzz this morning as they mull over the possibility that ultranationalist Avigdor Lieberman could be appointed foreign minister in the government that Benjamin Netanyahu is working to stitch together.

The strong showing by Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel our Home) party in last month’s election – where it won the third most Knesset seats ahead of the Labour Party - has put the Moldovan-born former nightclub bouncer turned bureaucrat in a strong position in the lobbying for top ministerial posts in the new government.

With Israel’s coalition building process such a tortuous and drawn-out affair, speculation, much of it wild, about who will get what job is inevitably rife in the local media.

As we reported yesterday – Netanyahu has ruled Lieberman out as a future defence minister, one of the top jobs in an Israeli government.

Lieberman is also understood to be interested in other key jobs for himself and his people including Justice, Interior and Internal security.

His aides, though, play down talk of all this horse-trading and deal-making.

“He has said he wants the defence portfolio, but he has also said cabinet positions are not a deal-breaker. What’s really important is that we agree on basic policy lines,” Yisrael Beiteinu spokeswoman Irena Etinger said.

You’ve set my mind at ease

Israel’s political picture has been so unclear and complicated since an indecisive Feb. 10 election that President Shimon Peres said he asked right-wing leader Benjamin Netanyahu to put it down on paper that he had in fact agreed to accept his mandate to go out and form the next Israeli government.

“And he has put it in writing, so now my mind is at ease,” Peres joked as he announced his decision to designate Netanyahu, rather than centrist Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, as potential prime minister — once he completes that task of coalition building.

Livni’s Kadima party had outpolled Netanyahu’s Likud, winning 28 seats in parliament to his 27. But Peres chose Netanyahu for the job of would-be prime minister because Netanyahu, a former prime minister, had the most other parliament members recommending him for the job.

But as much as Netanyahu, U.S.-educated and a polished speaker, wanted another shot at the nation’s top job, he certainly had a complex task ahead of him to rebuild a coalition with politicians whose views were disquietingly similar to the far-right lawmakers who effectively toppled his previous government in 1999 and forced an early election.

Writing in the Haaretz newspaper’s Web site, veteran Israeli political columnist Yossi Verter averred that dealing with such a divided Israel was “not how he planned to begin his second term.”

Livni has thus far indicated she would not join any coalition headed by Netanyahu, as she has said she objects to serving as a “fig-leaf” for policies that would not help advance negotiations with Palestinians for a two-state solution.  

Once Peres had formally designated Netanyahu, Kadima’s faction leader in parliament Yoel Hasson told Reuters that the party’s lawmakers were likely to ratify exactly that position when they meet on Sunday, and announce they would opt for the opposition benches in parliament.

Team of rivals for Israel?

Coalition-building in the aftermath of Israel’s inconclusive Feb. 10 election kicks into high gear on Wednesday, when the final results become official and President Shimon Peres begins sounding out party leaders on whom he should appoint to try to form the next administration.

To recap: neither the centrist Kadima party led by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni nor Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud won enough seats for a majority in the 120-member parliament. Kadima took 28 seats to Likud’s 27, but Netanyahu could stand a better chance of getting the nod from Peres because he is likely to have the support of a majority right-wing bloc of 65 legislators.

Army disappoints Bibi, the battle goes on

“When the soldiers’ votes come in, we will be way ahead.” So forecast a senior aide to Israeli right-winger Benjamin Netanyahu just after shock exit poll findings on Tuesday showing his Likud party trailing the centrist Kadima of Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni by one seat. But that result, which overturned months of opinion polls in Netanyahu’s favour, turned out to be bang on the money. Throughout Thursday, Likud supporters were banking on votes from army barracks. These were being counted a day after those of civilians and Likud had hoped that a traditional right-wing bias in the military would be enough to turn the election around and give Netanyahu the advantage – a crucial one in terms of persuading President Shimon Peres that Netanyahu, not Livni, should be invited to form a government coalition.

It wasn’t to be. As the elections committee in parliament finally faced the media, over an hour late, and then flustered through their notes on live television to declare the result, it turned out the initial result still stood. Kadima on 28 votes, Likud on 27 in the 120-seat Knesset. So, it’s all over? Not by a long way. The result isn’t absolutely final until it’s published in the official gazette next Wednesday. And from that point Peres has a week to designate someone to form a government. Livni tried and failed in November, triggering this election. Netanyahu, popularly known by his nickname ’Bibi’, says there has been a general rightward shift in the election. That has included a surge for the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu (Our Home is Israel) of Avigdor Lieberman, which elbowed past Labour into third place on 15 seats. That, Netanyahu says, gives him a better chance of forming a stable administration. Perhaps. But in 60 years, Israel’s largely ceremonial president has never passed over the leader of the party that has topped the polls. Cue more intensive negotiation. Watch this space.

Can Israel do a power-share?

A predawn victory party for Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni had all the trappings of a fairytale, including a ballroom setting in a Tel Aviv hotel.

The woman who had edged ahead of rival Benjamin Netanyahu in a national election stood to become Israel’s first woman prime minister in 30 years, and she had surely beaten the odds to get there, just weeks after polls predicted a resounding defeat for her centrist Kadima party.

“This is truly amazing, the public has had its say and it’s Tzipi,” Yaacov Edri, a former cabinet minister from Kadima, told me as supporters broke out in song and dance, proclaiming Livni as “queen of Israel,” and waving blue and red party flags.

A hip-hop style ode to the centrist party leader blared from loudspeakers.

Livni, flashing a triumphant V sign with her fingers called it “a wonderful day for Israel,” and said “the Israeli people have chosen Kadima and we will respect that choice by forming the next government, headed by Kadima.”

It didn’t take long for it to sink in for many that Livni’s victory celebration may have been premature. Netanyahu, whose right-wing Likud party trailed Kadima by only one seat in the 120-member parliament, also claimed victory, saying parties belonging to the “nationalist camp” had secured a governing majority.

“It’s not going to be easy at all,” Edri remarked about Livni’s chances of pulling together a coalition.Her first order of business may have to be implementing an electoral reform plan that whittles down the number of parties running in Israeli elections from the incredible 30 that took part in this latest contest.

Israel votes, Palestinians groan

Posted by Wafa Amr.

With each Israeli election since the 1993 historic Palestinian-Israeli interim peace deals, the Palestinians feel their situation has gone from bad to worse. This time, their sense of desperation deepened as they woke up to an Israeli political map strongly dominated by the right wing. People say the chances for peace and ending occupation seem more remote than ever. The editor-in-chief of the Palestinian official al-Hayat daily newspaper, Hafez al-Barghouthi, called the growing strength of the right-wingers in Israel the “Right-wing Tsunami”. Israel’s shift to the right has added to the Palestinians’ sense of hopelessness. “The victory of the Israeli right means an open invitation for the Palestinian factions to turn fanatic to confront the advocates of settlements and land theft,” Barghouthi wrote on election day.

Tzipi Livni’s centrist Kadima party led in Tuesday’s election with 28 seats, one seat over Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud in the 120-member parliament. The centre-left Labour party, which made peace with the Palestinians 16 years ago, suffered a heavy blow. The rise of Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party who has vowed to keep settlements and advocates tougher measures with the Palestinians and Israeli Arabs, has added to the Palestinians’ despair.

Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said this election showed the Israelis were not focused on issues of peace, and any coalition that will be formed wil be unable to deliver on the requirements of peace by freezing Jewish settlements and ceding occupied land for a future Palestinian state.

In past Israeli elections, and there were four prime ministers since Oslo, the choice was often seen as between a hawkish camp and a peace camp. This time, many Palestinians saw Israelis choosing between the far-right, the right wing and the centre-right. The election campaign was overshadowed by Israel’s January’s 22-day offensive against Palestinian militants in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip. Voters were seeking a leader who can best assure their security. Palestinians fear this translates into more daily hardships, more violence, a continued land grab for Jewish settlements and the loss of hope for a peaceful settlement to end 42 years of occupation.

While the “peace camp” has lost support in Israel, lack of progress on peace has weakened the Palestinian peace negotiators significantly. A power struggle between the Islamist Hamas, which won a parliamentary vote in 2006 and seized control of Gaza Strip in 2007 from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his secular Fatah group, has seriously undermined peace efforts. Popular anger at Israel during the January war in Gaza and resentment of rival policies of Hamas and Abbas have hardened the Palestinians. Abbas’ aides fear the rise of the right-wing in Israel could boost hardliners and Hamas.

In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Um Mahmoud, 65, sat in her living room in the city of Ramallah watching Livni speak to a crowd in Tel Aviv on TV. The Palestinian woman said Palestinians’ living conditions would not improve under any Israeli leader. “They rule the world and they put us in a cage confined to borders running between one checkpoint to the other in Ramallah. In the good old days, before Oslo, we used to drive to Gaza Strip to eat fish and swim in the sea and come back the same day,” she said.

I won! No, I did…

It’s a recipe for trouble and it will be down to Israel’s veteran president, 85-year-old Shimon Peres to sort it out. In sum, Livni of the ruling Kadima centrists, has a one-seat lead over former premier Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud. But neither party has as much as a quarter of the seats in the Knesset. Cue possibly weeks of haggling among the parties on forming a coalition government. By tradition, Peres ought to ask the leader of the biggest party – thus far, Livni – to try and build a cabinet first. But Netanyahu, rejecting her offer of joining her in a national unity government, says that overall the new parliament has a right-wing majority and that he is therefore in the better position to forge a stable administration.

Peres is no stranger to Israel’s convoluted coalition arithmetic. In 1984, he agreed to one of the weirdest election outcomes seen when, as left-wing Labour party leader, he did a deal with Yitzhak Shamir of Likud whereby the two spent two years each as prime minister during the four-year term of the parliament. There has been talk again today of the famous “rotation”, though few remember it with much fondness and recall a time of general political stalemate. Anxious to push for peace in the Middle East after Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip last month, new U.S. President Barack Obama will be among those concerned at the gridlock.

Also likely to get more attention in the coming days may be perennial talk of electoral reform in Israel, notably restricting seats in parliament to fewer parties in an effort to promote larger, more stable blocs. Avigdor Lieberman, the far-right Russian-speaking immigrant whose Yisrael Beiteinu party leapt past Labour into third place, proposes raising the threshold for winning seats in parliament from the present 2 percent to 5 percent – a level in line with, for example, Germany, where 5 parties currently sit in parliament compared with the dozen expected to have seats in the Knesset. The Israeli parliament’s web site notes some of the other ideas for electoral reform that have been discussed. The complex party matrix is, however, an obstacle in itself to reform of that system.

Lieberman, a potential kingmaker whose rhetoric has alarmed Arabs at home and abroad, also wants a strong presidency for Israel to cut through decades of deadlock as he sees it. For now, the president has few clear-cut powers beyond the ceremonial. But Peres (right), who has been a leading political figure throughout Israel’s 60-year history, now finds himself with potentially enormous influence in his choice of who will form the next government. Without a written constitution, he has a variety of laws, parliamentary regulations and 60 years of tradition to consider as he looks for a solution.

Confused? So must Peres be as he tries to untangle what the Yedioth headline calls the ”Political Knot”.

(PICTURES: Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper front page, Feb 11, 2009. REUTERS/Kineret Kaufman; Israeli President Shimon Peres looks through binoculars. www.president.co.il )

It ain’t over

A lesser blog than this one might resort to some trite cliche about how ‘it ain’t over until the fat lady sings’.

We will refrain – but it is tempting.

Despite taking the most Knesset seats according to exit polls after Israelis went to the polls – Tzipi Livni is still a long way from being anointed as Israel’s new Prime Minister.

Israeli exit polls – like tonight’s that give Livni a two seat lead over her rival Benjamin Netanyahu - have foxed us in the past.

In the primary elections for Livni’s Kadima party last year – the first exit polls had her leading her rival Shaul Mofaz by a significant margin. As the night wore on it became evident that the two were much, much closer than originally thought to the extent that there were some calls for a recount.