Michael Young, writing in The Daily Star [in Beirut] "An election that raises Syria's appetite" assesses the impact of the just-concluded, and inconclusive, election in Israel:
"Leave it to the Israelis and Palestinians to extinguish the heavenly light that accompanied Barack Obama into the White House. The American president, we were told, would take the sins of the Middle East onto his mortal shoulders and usher in a new morning of regional concord. Apparently not.
The wittiest comment on Israel's elections Tuesday, which saw a dramatic shift in the country toward the political right, came from a Hamas official, Moushir al-Masri, who declared that Israel had chosen "extremists." It would be difficult to disagree with Masri, but somehow he seemed to miss the irony that the Palestinians already did that three years ago when they elected a Hamas majority to the Palestinian Parliament.
What happens next in Israel is a matter of utter confusion. If Tzipi Livni, the Kadima leader, is asked to form a government, she will have to fish in the waters of the right to reach some sort of majority, one that will be unstable at best. If the Likud leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, is handed the task, his right-wing government will also be rickety, bringing together secular and religious parties, along with the xenophobic partisans of Avigdor Lieberman - by some estimates giving the right a short majority of 64 seats in the Knesset. And all for what? Livni won't have any margin to discontinue settlement building and evacuate occupied Arab land, assuming she is serious about it; while Netanyahu is explicitly hostile to it.
On the Hamas side, this is all excellent news. That Israel is obliterating what remains of the Oslo process suits the movement just fine. The one unmistakable victim of the Israeli election is the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, who can now look forward to many more years of deadlock with Israel, as well as an escalating effort by Hamas to discredit the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and then eventually either replace it with a more amenable structure or hijack the PLO itself."
Continue reading here.
"Leave it to the Israelis and Palestinians to extinguish the heavenly light that accompanied Barack Obama into the White House. The American president, we were told, would take the sins of the Middle East onto his mortal shoulders and usher in a new morning of regional concord. Apparently not.
The wittiest comment on Israel's elections Tuesday, which saw a dramatic shift in the country toward the political right, came from a Hamas official, Moushir al-Masri, who declared that Israel had chosen "extremists." It would be difficult to disagree with Masri, but somehow he seemed to miss the irony that the Palestinians already did that three years ago when they elected a Hamas majority to the Palestinian Parliament.
What happens next in Israel is a matter of utter confusion. If Tzipi Livni, the Kadima leader, is asked to form a government, she will have to fish in the waters of the right to reach some sort of majority, one that will be unstable at best. If the Likud leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, is handed the task, his right-wing government will also be rickety, bringing together secular and religious parties, along with the xenophobic partisans of Avigdor Lieberman - by some estimates giving the right a short majority of 64 seats in the Knesset. And all for what? Livni won't have any margin to discontinue settlement building and evacuate occupied Arab land, assuming she is serious about it; while Netanyahu is explicitly hostile to it.
On the Hamas side, this is all excellent news. That Israel is obliterating what remains of the Oslo process suits the movement just fine. The one unmistakable victim of the Israeli election is the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, who can now look forward to many more years of deadlock with Israel, as well as an escalating effort by Hamas to discredit the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and then eventually either replace it with a more amenable structure or hijack the PLO itself."
Continue reading here.
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