They compete against larger parties untainted by an approach that resulted in thousands of Israelis dead and forfeiting strategic territory to a bloodthirsty enemy.
Tel Aviv, November 13 – Whether Israel’s next parliamentary contest takes place in the next few months will become clear over time, but the current war with Hamas, political analysts say, has left the country’s Land-for-Peace proponents, with no prospect of riding such a platform over the electoral threshold, leaving them with the unsavory alternative of competing against Netanyahu opponents who never sullied their reputations by insisting that ceding territory and weapons to murderous thugs bent on perpetrating a second Holocaust would bring the conflict with the Palestinians to a peaceful resolution.
Leaders of the far-left Meretz Party – at present without representation in the Knesset, having failed to attract enough votes to meet the 3.5% electoral threshold – and some core members of the Labor Party – itself a shadow of its glory under Ben-Gurion, Meir, Rabin, and Peres – acknowledged today that the valence of their classic positions on how to approach the conflict with the Palestinians can no longer carry them into the parliament, given the Israeli public’s final disillusionment with any hope of concessions to the Palestinians offering any hope for peace.
That, analysts, say, all but eliminates the political positions that make those parties unique, or in any way appealing, to enough voters. That means they must now compete against a crowded field of larger center and center-left parties that, unlike Labor and Meretz, remain untainted by association with an approach that resulted in thousands of Israelis dead and tens of thousands injured – while still having forfeited strategically important territory to a sworn bloodthirsty enemy.
Meretz, for its part, competes less against the center-left and more against the Arab parties, some of which stand even farther to the left than Meretz itself – one of whose original constituent parties, prior to a 1980’s merger, was outright communist. That poses a problem, since the vast majority of voting Israelis sympathetic to to outright socialism, let alone communism, view the mostly-Arab Hadash Party as more representative of their interests.
Labor, as well, will struggle to distinguish itself from the now-proven Blue and White Party, which joined the wartime unity government and is now poised to supplant the weak, incompetent Likud – as well as from Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid Party, which never openly supported giving land to people whose national aspirations revolve around mass murder of Jews. Those parties will work to distance themselves from Likud and Netanyahu, hindering Labor and Meretz’s efforts to remain relevant.
Netanyahu presided over the the greatest intelligence and preparedness failure in Israel’s history, rendering him a lame duck and likely condemning his Likud Party to a hammering in the next elections – but at least Likud stood mostly in opposition to Land for Peace. Right-leaning voters represent a convincing majority of the electorate, but they will have no one worthy of their votes.
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