Israeli Elections: Kadima and Olmert win election, look to coalition with Labor, others
By Leslie Susser
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JERUSALEM (JTA)—Ehud Olmert's Kadima Party has won the Israeli election and will have enough support to form the next government—but the party did not fare as well as expected, and will have to accommodate the socioeconomic demands of Labor, its likely coalition partner.
Exit polls gave the centrist Kadima 29 seats, left-tending Labor 22 seats and the right-wing Likud Party 11 seats.
Yisrael Beiteinu, a right-wing party that nevertheless backs West Bank withdrawal, was one of the biggest winners on the night, garnering 12-14 seats. Shas and United Torah Judaism, two fervently Orthodox parties, won 10-11 seats and five to six seats, respectively, while the Pensioners won six to eight seats and Arab parties won seven to eight seats.
Voter turnout was 63 percent, by far the lowest in Israel's history.
Most significantly, the center-left parties—Kadima, Labor, the Pensioners, Meretz and the Arab lists—together have around 70 seats in the 120-member Knesset.
The three big election surprises were Kadima's relatively poor showing, Yisrael Beiteinu's emergence as the third-largest party ahead of Likud, and the strong showing of the Pensioners, who were not expected to win any seats.
How did Kadima win? For one, Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu's scare tactics—raising the specter of an Iranian-supported, fundamentalist, Hamas-led Palestinian entity on Israel's doorstep—backfired. Those he frightened didn't necessarily see him as the leader best-equipped to deal with the threat, and many of them voted for parties further right, such as Yisrael Beiteinu.
Many others moved to the center, backing Olmert's plan for unilateral disengagement from the Palestinians as the most rational way of dealing with the Hamas threat. And though Likud lost much of its traditional Sephardi working-class base to Labor, with its strong socioeconomic message, Labor lost even more of its middle-class Ashkenazi voters to Kadima and the Pensioners.
In recent elections, the straw poll results have closely approximated the actual count, and if the numbers hold up this time, Olmert will be prime minister with wide coalition options.
He has made support for his plan to establish new borders between Israel and the Palestinians a condition for joining his coalition. That rules out the hawkish National Union-National Religious Party and the Likud, and makes Labor the most natural coalition partner.
Around the Kadima-Labor core, Olmert will be able to choose one or more additional coalition partners from the Pensioners, Meretz, Yisrael Beiteinu, Shas and United Torah Judaism.
Ideally, he would like to achieve a balance between left and right and between secular and religious parties. That would entail a broad-based coalition of between 70 and 90 Knesset seats.
Whatever form the coalition eventually takes, Olmert will have a clear majority in the Knesset for his plan for separation from the Palestinians, which is likely to become the centerpiece of his new administration.
Because Olmert made his intentions crystal-clear before the elections, right-wing opponents of the plan will not be able to demand a referendum on the grounds that he misled the nation, as they did with Ariel Sharon's pullback from Gaza last year. To a large extent, the election itself was a referendum on the plan.
The plan will be at the heart of the new government's guidelines: It calls for a large-scale Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and the establishment of permanent borders with the Palestinians within four years, by negotiation if possible and unilaterally if not. The plan is certain to dominate the political agenda in the new Knesset's term.
The second major item in the guidelines will be the administration's socioeconomic agenda. As the price for bringing Labor into the government, Labor leader Amir Peretz will make a number of key socioeconomic demands, including raising the minimum wage from $730 to $1,000 a month, providing pensions for all and increasing the basket of subsidized medicines.
The pensioners will back him up, and Olmert will be forced to incorporate at least part of these demands in the government guidelines.
Both agendas, the political and the socioeconomic, are extremely ambitious. But how realistic are they?
To set new borders unilaterally, Olmert will need international, especially American, backing. It's by no means certain that the Bush administration will see eye-to-eye with him on where the new lines should be drawn.
The key American document on the territorial issue is the Bush letter of April 2004. It refers to "already existing major Israeli population centers" being taken into account in setting permanent borders, but doesn't specifically mention any of the large settlement blocs—Ariel, Etzion and parts of Jerusalem—that Olmert wants to keep.
Moreover, the American position is that permanent borders should be the product of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, and it's difficult to see Washington recognizing borders that Israel sets unilaterally. Olmert argues that with Hamas in power on the Palestinian side, Washington is likely to be more receptive to Israeli ideas on the border issue.
To implement a Peretz-style socioeconomic package, Olmert will have to approve increased government spending. The trick will be to do that without impeding the impressive economic growth of the past few years—which was achieved, to a large extent, through fiscal austerity.
Much will depend on Olmert's diplomatic initiative on the Palestinian track. If it leads to a prolonged cease-fire, that will help Israel's growth prospects—while, possibly, postponing conflict until a future time. It also will make it easier for the government to cut the defense budget and release funds for socioeconomic spending.
The bottom line: Though Kadima did worse than expected, Olmert will be able to form a stable coalition and will not have to shelve any of his major policy goals. But his personal prestige has been compromised by the party's relatively poor showing, and his first order of business will be to establish his leadership credentials.