THE 2003 ISRAELI ELECTION: THE MORNING AFTER

Here are my thoughts on two major questions rased by yesterday's major re-drawing of the Israeli political map.

1) Is this the end of Labor as we know it?

Yes. The party notched an all-time low of 19 seats. To put this disaster in the proper perspective, in the last single-ballot election, 1992, Labor notched 44 mandates. That's a loss of over a fifth of the electorate. Labor had long since jettisoned anything resembling a discernible domestic policy. It re-emerged in the 1980s as a coaltion of moderate doves - with the dovish and moderates wings in equipoise. However, the party abandoned the doves Oslo gamble, and in the process became the party of Oslo. Labor had one final chance to redefine itself in the wake of Barak's landslide loss to Sharon in the 2001 prime ministerial election. They could have repudiated Oslo without repudiating seperation from the Palestinians. This would require however the party to commit to national unity in face of the Palestinian threat, while simultaneously offering alternative options of separation. Instead, they left a popular unity government, adopted a platform of unconditional negotiations, and ruled out returning to another desperately needed unity government. The coming debate over joining a unity government may very well cause the inevitable fracture of doves and centrists. The doves will join their leader Yossi Beillin as part of a Greater Meretz, and the centrists will follow their constituency out of the party - to Shinui, Likud or another centrist alternative.


2) What's Sharon's best option? How likely is it to happen?



Sharon's best option is a centrist coalition with Labor & Shinui (and the other centrist parties) that adds up to a firm 77-seat majority. This will provide Sharon with cover diplomatically, permit him to finesse the more hawkish members of his party when necessary for popular consensus or relations with the U.S., and significantly create a government with a powerful mandate for domestic reforms - so that he can present the electorate with some sort of progress when the possibility for diplomatic breakthroughs looks bleak over the next few years. This of course would require a wresting of control of Labor from Mitzna, and a willingness for Sharon to tolerate short-term backlash from the religious extremists while reaping longer-term support from the average Israeli.


It is far more likely, however, that Sharon will attempt to put together the same coalition that he just had - with Labor, NRP, Shas and UTJ. (77 seats).



If the Labor doves succeed in keeping the party out of the government, Sharon's best option would be to cobble a compromise between NRP and Shinui on cultural issues (slowly undoing the Haredi welfare system, but not pushing forward with civil marriage), add the two centrist parties, and form a narrow government of 62 mandates. This would put Sharon in a prime position to lure Labor defectors into the government.