viernes, 25 de enero de 2013

viernes, enero 25, 2013

REVIEW & OUTLOOK

January 23, 2013, 7:35 p.m. ET

Israel's New Political Center

Netanyahu gets a new term, albeit with some different partners.


In the run-up to Israel's parliamentary election on Tuesday it was the fashion among Western commentators to lament the Jewish state's alleged drift to the supposed far right. Instead, Israeli voters filled out their ballots in a way that chastened Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu though it didn't defeat him, and again proved Western conventional wisdom wrong.


The main news from Tuesday is that the Israeli center holds—even if that center isn't what many outsiders wish it would be. Mr. Netanyahu's Likud party had been expected to cruise to an easy re-election, especially after its merger last fall with the hard-line Yisrael Beiteinu party controlled by former Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.


But Mr. Lieberman resigned from his office last month after being indicted on breach of trust charges. That, along with his penchant for demagoguery and near-pariah status abroad, no doubt soured some Israeli voters who wanted a Likud with a more center-right flavor. Mr. Netanyahu didn't help himself by running a mediocre campaign whose message was that Israelis should simply vote for the guy everyone expected to win.


It was that expectation that gave an opening to a slate of new parties run by fresh political faces. Tuesday's big winner was the Yesh Atid (There Is a Future) party, which was founded last April by a former journalist and TV personality named Yair Lapid.


Mr. Lapid, whose views on Palestinian issues are barely to the left of Mr. Netanyahu's, ran a campaign focused mainly on the interests of Israel's secular middle class. Its core demand is that Israeli Arabs and ultra-Orthodox Jews not be exempted, as they now generally are, from military service. Mr. Lapid will now have 19 of the Israeli Knesset's 120 seats, second only to Likud, which will have 31.


Another relatively new face is 40-year-old Naftali Bennett, a former high-tech entrepreneur whose HaBayit HaYehudi (Jewish Home) party took 11 seats and largely represents West Bank settlers. Mr. Bennett is a charismatic figure but fell steeply in late polling after a member of his party list outrageously suggested blowing up Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock.


But if Israelis are wary of moving too far to the nationalist right, they seemed equally skeptical of the oblivious left. September will be the 20th anniversary of the signing of the Oslo Accords, and many Israelis have concluded that the more concessions they've made to their Palestinian and Arab neighbors, the more hostility they've received in return.


Thus the traditionally dovish Labor Party polled third, after Mr. Lapid, despite having an effective new leaderanother ex-journalist—in Shelly Yachimovich. Even worse was the showing of the left-wing Meretz party, whose enthusiasm for the peace process is widely shared abroad but represents a shrinking sliver of more realistic Israelis.


Mr. Netanyahu will now have to make a choice as to what kind of coalition he means to stitch together. The headline news is that he's been badly weakened by these elections, but that's probably an exaggeration. Israelis are getting the prime minister they wanted, but with some interesting new faces and parties who may have staying power or turn out to be one-election wonders.


For all the troubles of its neighborhood, Israel is a modern country with modern problems, including a high cost of living, taxes that are too high, and the unintended consequences of welfarism. On Tuesday, Israelis reminded the world that they need to address these issues too.

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