Likud/Labor forms unity government

Former failed PM Ehud Barak has joined former failed PM Bibi Netanyahu to form a unity government of opportunist parties which lack ANY substantive convictions or ideologies, giving the Israeli people yet another wasted election that just reinforces how flawed the political system is in the Holy Land.

With this merger, Kadima now takes over the role of the opposition almost entirely to themselves. The tiny humanist/arab/communist rabble parties that sit with Livni in opposition are insignificant from a coalition perspective, thus anointing Kadima rather than Labor as the party most representative of Israel's mainstream left.

By virtue of this development, Labor now assumes the mantle of being Israel's representative center-left party; more pragmatic than Kadima's uncompromising liberal idealism regarding territorial compromise and Palestinian rights, and willing to work together with Israel's Likud center-right coalition to find middle ground.

Internally, Labor is hotly divided between their ideological left and the pragmatists, though when push comes to shove the MK's always want more to sit in the cushy chairs of government than follow their convictions out the party door, so the internal rift among their elected members is symbolic only.

However, among the voters there is no question that Kadima's stand against a unity government will allow them to pull from the further left even stronger next time around, probably even among many anti-Zionists and post-Zionists, leaving Labor's future market the elusive middle ground of what's left of the aging, dwindling Zionist left, along with the left-leaning pragmatist voters wanting to maintain status quo and stability.

This, then, represents the completion of Sharon's bizarre legacy, transforming himself from the grisly, "Bulldozer" general, who symbolized the settler mission from a secular perspective more powerfully than any other leader, into the "concessionist" leader who headed the pogrom making Gaza Judenrein, openly declaring the long held Likud dream of "Greater Israel" dead, and founding the Kadima Party as the flag bearers of liberalism and anti-nationalist ideology.

Similarly, Bibi successfully expelled the Greater Israel Zionists from Likud the same way that Sharon expelled the Jews from Gaza. He simply declared that he would not allow for Feiglin and company to sit in his party, the kangaroo court of post-Zionists provided the rubber stamp, and that was the end of that.

Netanyahu had been handed from the elections a 65 seat coalition majority if he was willing to govern from the nationalist and religious position, but he is not a religious or nationalist man, so he wanted partners in government that had the same lack of values and conviction he does to run a pragmatist government that is primarily in power just to stay in power - and who better than Ehud Barak, his mirror image in Labor, to make this dream a reality?

So, Israel is in a state of political flux, as usual, but if you look just beneath the chaos you'll find the one constant: megolomaniacs retaining power, selling out their constituents, and standing for nothing except perks, fame and fortune. There is nothing new under the sun in the politics of the Holy Land.

~MZ