The recent Israeli elections were quite the upset. Binyamin "Bibi" Netanyahu, right-wing Likud Party leader, had led in the polls all the way until days before the election. But then Tzipi Livni, current foreign minister and Kadima Party leader, pulled off a slim, but stunning upset.
The problem?
Israeli politics make Italian politics look stable. Israeli political representation in the Knesset is proportional to the vote a party receives. It is impossible to form even a National Unity coalition of the two largest parties. Instead, coalitions must include many parties, including fringe, often extreme, parties.
Here are the provisional results from the 2009 election:
28 - Kadima
27 - Likud
15 - Yisrael Beiteinu
13 - Labor
11 - Shas
5 - United Torah
4 - Hadash
4 - United Arab
4 - National Union
3 - Balad
3 - Jewish Home
3 - Meretz
120 total Knesset seats
http://www.ynet.co.il/...
And there's the rub.
Even though Livni's Kadima Party won the most seats, the political balance is on the right-wing side of the spectrum. The party with the greatest losses was Ehud Barak's Labor Party. The party with the greatest political gains (if not actual seats) was Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu. Livni cannot form a governing coalition on the center-left. There are not enought seats in play. Netanyahi could easily form a coalition on the right, but this would include Lieberman. Livni could also try to buy off Lieberman in a Kadima-Labor-Yisrael Beiteinu coalition.
As anyone who follows Israeli politics knows, Avigdor Lieberman is a blatant racist who advocates deportation of Israel's Arab population and execution of any Israeli Arab official in contact with Hamas. He openly jokes about killing Arab prisoners and bombing Palestinian towns. There will be no peace process with Lieberman in the government.
Why should Americans care? Well, President Obama has indicated that restarting a comprehensive Middle Eastern peace process is central to his foreign policy. And the United States does give Israel more than $2.5 billion in aid every year - more than $100 billion since the inception of the state of Israel in 1949.
Netanyahu issued a veiled threat towards Obama not to meddle in Israeli politics. But is it in the interests of the United States to have an avowed racist party in the Israeli government? Is it meddling to send a quiet message that U.S. support will be reconsidered if Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu is part of the next government?
There is a strong possibility that a moderate National Unity government might emerge that contains Kadima, Likud, and Labor. President Obama can begin the "change" in United States Middle Eastern policy by making clear to the leading Israeli politicians - privately if possible, publicly if necessary - that the United States will not be willing to be associated with an Israeli government containing Avigdor Lieberman.