Israel's Backward March

Israelis will be going to the polls in late March with the hope of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict once and for all. The new political party Kadima, which means "forward" in Hebrew, promised as much and is expected to win the day, while the country's long-established ruling parties, Labor and Likud, will lose their traditional place at the helm.

Although the refreshing social-justice discourse introduced by Labor's new leader, the Moroccan-born union advocate Amir Peretz, did inject energy into the shattered party, he failed to garner the support many had hoped for. His position regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been rightly criticized as incoherent, and it also appears that many of Labor's longtime Ashkenazi voters have deserted the party ranks because they are unwilling to be led by a Mizrahi Jew.

Likud's situation is even worse. Following the creation of Kadima it lost about half its cohort and has been increasingly characterized as an extremist party that represents the settlers' uncompromising ideology. Moreover, during his tenure as finance minister, party leader Benjamin Netanyahu introduced unpopular Thatcherite policies that pushed hundreds of thousands of Israelis under the poverty line.

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