worldmusings

It looks like we’ll be seeing a hawkish Likud-led coalition leading Israel. While Likud came in a close second to the centrist Kadima party,28-27, the political balance of power leans right, and President Shimon Peres has given Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu the first crack at forming a government.

The coalition has some interesting bedfellows who may only agree on taking a tougher stand in dealing with Palestinians in general and Hamas in particular; here’s a BBC breakdown of the seats in the new Knesset.

The hot commodity in this last election was Yisrael Beiteinu, who wants a two-state solution on Israel’s terms, which include spinning off Arab-majority areas of Israel proper into a Palestinian state and annexing parts of the West Bank into Israel; YB came in in third place with 15 seats. YB is also more secular in nature, wanting to scrap some of the blue-law-esque Sabbath regulations that the religous parties like.

The biggest of those religious parties is Shas (11 seats), who represents Sephardic Jews who immigrated from Arab areas; they tend to be poorer than Ashkenazi Jews who have European roots and have tended to be outside the Israeli power structure. Thus, Shas will tend to lobby for more poverty-fighting programs for their struggling kin; it may be an odd analogy, but a decent Shas analog in the US might be a black Baptist or COGIC Pentecostal, conservative in theology but liberal on economics.

There are three small parties of religious conservative Ashkenazis who will be in the mix; United Torah Judiasm has 5 seats, National Union has 4 and Jewish Home has 3.

To get to a 61 seat majority using a right-of-center coalition, Likud will need YP, Shas, United Torah and one of the other  two religious parties. That generally means giving at least one cabinet seat to each member of the coalition and having five political parties to keep happy; this will make the coalition-building process very messy.

What might result is a change in tactics to be harsh towards Hamas and to work towards bringing some of the West Bank Jewish settlements into Israel proper, using YP’s framework. That will tick off a lot of folks in the US and Europe who would prefer seeing the Palestinians getting the West Bank whole rather than a large fraction of it. Then, the west will have to decide whether to accept this fait accompli or somehow challenge it.

Hillary, are you sure you want to be Secretary of State? You’ll be getting combat pay and some cool frequent-flier miles that Henry Kissinger would be envious of.