Sharon's Centrism the Likely Winner of Israel's Shake-Up

[Thom Little]

Israeli politics is undergoing its most dramatic changes in 30 years. The realignment of parties and leaders is all the more remarkable because the latest developments - Ariel Sharon's decision to leave the ruling Likud party, the defeat of Shimon Peres as the Labor Party's chairman and Labor's withdrawal from Sharon's grand coalition government - were utterly unexpected. So it is important to comprehend the significance of these changes for the future of Israel, the region and the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Israel's political system, to put it simply, is coming to the end of its second era. From independence in 1948 until 1977, the Labor Party was dominant, before giving way to an opposition coalition of conservative, nationalist and centrist parties allied in the Likud bloc. Since then, the two parties have taken turns in power, sometimes in grand coalitions and often in partnership with smaller parties.

On the surface, party competition has been between Left and Right, or doves and hawks. The truth, of course, is more complex. Social class and economic issues, overshadowed by the persistence of more existential concerns - physical security and the continued existence of the state - have played a much less important role in Israel than in other societies. Here, the political divide could be defined as optimists v pessimists. The former, as in Labor, believed that some day a force would emerge among Arabs and Palestinians ready to make peace on a reasonable basis; the latter, as in Likud, were more doubtful.

For years the argument remained an abstraction, a debate over what might happen in the future, until the Oslo agreement with the Palestine Liberation Organisation in 1993 put the competing perspectives to the test. Since 2000, when PLO leader Yasser Arafat rejected a political settlement and instead launched a five-year war of terrorism, there have been few optimists left.


http://www.realclearpolitics.com/Commentary/PS-11_24_05_BR.html