Israeli Elections: The more things change... Posted by Gayle Meyers

Israel's polls closed 90 minutes ago, and exit polls show that Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's Kadima ("Forward") party won the largest number of seats in the Knesset (parliament), and will most likely be given a chance to form a governing coalition.  Along with the two parties to its immediate left, Labor and Meretz, Kadima would control approximately 55 seats in the 120-seat parliament.  Adding the votes of the far-left Arab-Israeli parties, Kadima will have enough votes to carry out Olmert's plan for unilateral withdrawal from territories of the West Bank. 

However, while he has a parliamentary majority, Olmert can scarcely claim an overwhelming mandate for his controversial plan. The right side of the political spectrum captured approximately 50 seats.  Former ruling party Likud dropped precipitously, to approximately 11 seats, but Yisrael Beiteinu ("Israel is our Home"), which advocates redrawing Israel's borders so that Arab cities would no longer be part of the country, was the rising star of the election, jumping from 4 seats in the last parliament to an expected 12 to 14 this time around. The real wild card is the Pensioners' Party, which ran on the single issue of benefits for senior citizens but has no foreign policy.  The 6 to 8 seats it is predicted to win could make a difference in Kadima's freedom of decision. 

The elections leave Israeli-Palestinian relations approximately where they were before the polls opened.  Israeli voters neither gave a ringing endorsement to unilateral withdrawal nor rejected it decisively.  After working and living in Jerusalem for nearly two years, I found myself wishing for a deus ex machina of a result, something that would change the dynamics of the Middle East enough to suggest a resolution to the conflict.  These two years have been filled with events that felt like political earthquakes: The death of Yasser Arafat, the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, the stroke that incapacitated Ariel Sharon, and the election of Hamas to the leadership of the Palestinian Authority.  After each event, the dust has settled, and we find ourselves facing the same issues of land, identity, security and independence, which must be solved to the satisfaction of both Palestinians and Israelis.