An Electoral Solution? (Neve Gordon)

Israelis went to the polls this week with the hope of resolving the Israeli Palestinian conflict once and for all. The new political party Kadima, which means “forward” in Hebrew, promised as much and therefore won the day, while the country’s long-established ruling parties, Labor and Likud, lost their traditional place at the helm.

Although the refreshing social justice discourse introduced by Labor’s new leader, the Moroccan born union advocate Amir Peretz, did inject energy into the shattered party, he failed to reap the support many had hoped for. His position regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been rightly criticized as incoherent, and it also appears that many of Labor’s longtime Ashkenazi voters have deserted the party ranks because they are unwilling to be led by a Mizrahi Jew.


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Examining the make up of the new Knesset, it appears that anywhere between 65 and 85 members out of 120 will support Olmert’s proposal. The brilliancy of Kadima’s political plan is that it solves Israel’s demographic problem and presents its solution as the two-state option, regardless of the fact that this will be the first time in history that a so-called “independent state” will not have power over any of its borders. Indeed, Kadima’s plan elides the fact that Israel will continue to control the Palestinians, whose living conditions will be even further limited. The methods of control, though, will have to be more remote and technologically sophisticated, using biometrics, video cameras, robots and surveillance aircraft.

The Palestinians, in turn, will no doubt employ all means at their disposal to resist Israel’s attempt to transform the West Bank and Gaza into remotely controlled Bantustans. Consequently, one should not be surprised if Olmert’s plan were to be met by Qasam missiles being launched from the West Bank towards Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv.

The ultimate irony is that Kadima’s political vision actually puts the peace process into reverse. On the one hand, it is trying to persuade the public that it can make the Palestinian problem disappear by reintroducing the age-old Zionist trope of an iron wall. On the other hand, it has abandoned all forms of dialogue and negotiation, which Israeli leaders since the early 1990s understood to be the only way to reach a solution with the Palestinians. Kadima is accordingly an oxymoron. While the party’s name means forward its political program will effectively take Israelis several steps backwards.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=107&ItemID=10020

and it also appears that many of Labor’s longtime Ashkenazi voters have deserted the party ranks because they are unwilling to be led by a Mizrahi Jew

we have "mizrachi jews" at the top echelon within the IDF as well as throughout other parties......(meretz i believe is "short")

zmags tendency to look for racism within israels society many times sound like its taken from the old soviet or china manuals.