A Rare Miss From Walter Russell Mead
March 29, 2012 § 1 Comment
WRM is one of my favorite analysts because he is uncommonly thoughtful and erudite and often brings up points that I would not have thought to consider on my own. His latest missive on the Kadima election, however, is an anomaly for him as it seems like he dashed it off without really considering what actually went on over the past few weeks in Israeli politics. He contends that Kadima dumped Livni in favor of Mofaz because Kadima voters want to compete with Netanyahu on Iran and other defense issues, and that by “wrap[ping] itself in the khaki” the party is moving to the hawkish right. This sounds plausible as a surface explanation if you just look at Mofaz being a former defense minister and IDF chief, but it ignores the scope of the entire primary campaign, during which Mofaz explicitly campaigned on social issues rather than defense issues. It also breezes past the fact that Mofaz is on record as advocating negotiations with Hamas and that he blasted Netanyahu today for advocating a strike on Iran that Mofaz deems premature at this point and described as disastrous and ineffective. Most devastatingly, Mofaz blew out Livni on the strength of the 25% of Kadima’s voters who are Arab Israelis and who voted for Mofaz at a 71% clip. I agree with Mead that Mofaz is likely to eventually join the Likud coalition, but this election was certainly not an effort on the part of the Kadima rank and file to become more hawkish, nor was it a referendum on defense and security issues. In fact, it was precisely the opposite. Like I said, WRM’s analysis is all the more surprising considering how high he has set the bar for himself with his work, so I am confident that he simply wasn’t paying terribly close attention to the Kadima primary.
Being Shaul Mofaz
March 29, 2012 § 2 Comments
After Kadima won the most Knesset seats in the 2009 elections and was unable to form a coalition, Tzipi Livni had a choice: she could either bring Kadima into the Netanyahu coalition or she could position Kadima as the primary opposition to Likud. She chose the latter, partly because she understandably could not stomach the thought of serving in a coalition in which her party had the most seats but someone else would get to be prime minister, and now it appears that her exit from politics is imminent. New Kadima leader Shaul Mofaz is about to face what appears to be a similar choice, and he also appears to be taking the Livni route, but I don’t think his strategy is going to last very long.
Mofaz is trying to position Kadima as the champion of social and economic equality, announcing that he will lead protests this summer against Haredi military exemptions and economic subsidies. It is an interesting tactic, since Kadima has not as of yet been viewed as leading the vanguard of the social protest movement, and his targeting of Haredim suggests that he believes there is a hole where Tommy Lapid’s Shinui party used to exist. Announcing his desire to lead a protest movement puts him squarely and clearly in the opposition, and going after Haredi sacred cows will earn him the wrath of Bibi’s coalition partners Shas and UTJ. This move makes sense in context; after all, Mofaz is now the head of Israel’s opposition and controls the mosts single party seats in the Knesset, and there is no reason why he should not make an attempt to succeed where Livni failed and become the next prime minister.
Ultimately though, it’s not going to happen. Polling after the Mofaz victory indicates that Kadima will only win 12 seats in the next Knesset, which will make Mofaz and his party irrelevant. No matter what happens between now and the next elections, Kadima is not going to make up enough ground to win outright or remain as the largest opposition party. Mofaz is not viewed as someone genuinely concerned with social issues given his history, and does not have the trust of Israeli voters or protest leaders who are predominantly concerned with inequality. Additionally, Yair Lapid’s new party will capture any secular anti-Haredi voters that Mofaz is trying to win over with the upcoming summer protests, so his new strategy is a losing one. Already, Interior Minister and Shas head Eli Yishai is calling for Mofaz to bring Kadima into the cabinet and as soon as Mofaz awakens to the fact that socially-minded Israelis will be voting for Lapid or for their traditional champions in Labor and Meretz, he will end up joining the coalition. Mofaz is gutsy by attempting to carve out a new space for himself and for Kadima, but he also has no desire to be consigned to irrelevance as Livni now is, and so my prediction is that he will give up sooner rather than later and join the Netanyahu government before his window to do so closes for good.
Kadima Election Update
March 27, 2012 § Leave a comment
As I predicted, Mofaz has won. So now comes the interesting part, where Livni leaves Kadima, and Mofaz either brings Kadima into the Likud coalition, or challenges Netanyahu directly and then folds the party when it gets devastated in the next election.
Anyone Still Think That Both Livni and Mofaz Will Be Kadima Members By The End of Today?
March 27, 2012 § Leave a comment
This is starting to sound like a GOP primary in South Carolina. I can see why Mofaz’s camp might want to employ some trickery after what happened during the last Kadima leadership vote, and Livni’s protestations ring a bit hollow, particularly given her efforts to expel Likud supporters from Kadima only after she decided they were likely to vote for Mofaz. Personally, I am rooting for a Livni victory because she presents Israeli voters with a greater contrast to Netanyahu and a wider variety of choices is a good thing for democracy. I also think Livni is a symbolically important figure in Israeli politics given that she is a woman in a strongly male-dominated political arena, and more crucially she is one of only a handful of Israeli politicians not tainted by corruption or suspicion of corruption. I fear though that she is going to be the loser today, and there is no doubt in my mind that irrespective of who wins, the loser is going to leave Kadima and the party itself will not last more than one more election cycle. Livni and Mofaz are too different and detest each other too much to coexist, all the more so in light of the rhetoric used by both sides in this campaign. And unlike the Netanyahu-Shalom rivalry within Likud, which is in some ways much nastier, there is not going to be enough at stake given Kadima’s sagging fortunes for both Livni and Mofaz to stick it out. Silvan Shalom can hold out hope that he can eventually dislodge Bibi and become PM and thus brave the various insults levied at him by Bibi, but Kadima is past its peak and is rapidly approaching its nadir. Here’s to hoping that if Livni does indeed lose, this is not the last that we’ve seen of her.
