Israel:
Election fervor, new parties but no real alternative

by Hans Lebrecht

Elections are in the air here in Israel. Everybody wants to become Prime 
Minister — or at least a Member of Knesset (parliament) — except me, it 
seems.

Parties split, new ones appear like worms after rain, and the big dream is 
to become a prime PM candidate of a so-called centrist party.

None of those prospective and self-styled candidates propose a real 
alternative to the now-defunct Likud regime under Benjamin "Bibi" 
Netanyahu. It's all about who, but not about what or how.

About a dozen people have already declared their candidacy for Prime 
Minister and more than 30 new parties have already registered (parties 
represented in the outgoing Knesset don't need to register).

Netanyahu and his regime were forced to agree to early elections because of 
public rejection of his sabotage of the peace process with the 
Palestinians. Even most of his leading Likud bedfellows have had enough of 
his intrigues, broken promises and foul tricks, on a personal, national and 
international level.

On January 4, the Knesset voted 81 to 27 for new elections. By law, the 
general elections should take place within 60 days.

However, the representatives of Likud and Labor in the Knesset Law 
Committee have concocted to postpone the elections until May 17, with a 
possible second round for Prime Minister on June 1.

A newly-elected PM has at least 45 days to present his government to the 
Knesset. This would mean that instead of new elections in March, 
Netanyahu's reign will be prolonged by at least another six months.

Until a new government is established, Netanyahu and his chums will reign 
as a caretaker government, which is immune to a parliamentary vote of no-
confidence — giving it, in effect, absolute power.

A desperate, wounded wolf will be a shepherd for six months or, as former 
Likud chair and PM Yitzhak Shamir put it: "Netanyahu has destroyed the 
Likud and could end up destroying Israel."

However, why the Labor representative in the committee, on the precise 
orders of Labor chief Ehud Barak, agreed to postponement of the elections 
must be seen as a result of advice from three Americans he hired for the 
fat sum of US$30 million.

These three had previously been the advisors of England's Tony Blair and 
Germany's Gerhard Schroeder, both of whom succeeded in ousting the 
conservative regimes in their respective countries.

Apparently these advisors told Barak that he would have more chance to win 
against his diverse competitors for PM, especially against the new media 
star Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, if the elections took place later.

None of the candidates proposes a real alternative to Netanyahu's peace 
sabotaging policy or to the Government's anti-labour economic and social 
policy. They all promise to change it, but none offers any real plan of how 
to do it.

Because the vast majority of the Israeli people want peace, they all 
promise to promote peace, albeit some illusionary peace with territorial 
"compromise", while retaining most of the Jewish settlements.

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People's Weekly World (abridged)