Israel's political future cloudy

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is surrounded by political enemies these days. The recently released report commissioned by the Israeli legislative assembly on Israel's war with Hezbollah guerillas in Lebanon during the summer of 2006 declares that the war effort was politically mismanaged and that the Israeli cause was lost. Olmert and his defense minister were highly criticized for hasty decisions and a lack of vision.

The war last summer, which cost 158 Israeli military and civilian lives and over 1000 guerilla and civilian lives in Lebanon, was not the sort of war the Israeli people demand of their government. Israel's wars in the past have usually been short, violent conflicts with a decisive outcome, usually in Israel's favor. A month long conflict achieving neither the destruction of Hezbolla nor the return of two kidnapped Israeli soldiers has been viewed as a failure by the Israeli press and, now, by the report commissioned by the Israeli Knesset.

Further complicating Israeli politics is the relative youth of the ruling Kadima party and the popularity of Deputy Prime Minister/Minister of Foreign Affairs Tzipi Livni. Livni is seen as dovish in comparison to Olmert, which has made her increasingly popular with the secular Jewish population.

Livni's popularity, however, could prove to be the undoing of Kadima's hold on power. The Shas party, a Sephardi Ultra-Orthodox party, could break from the coalition government because their socially conservative members could object to serving under a woman Prime Minister, and one that is considered weak on religious Zionist issues such as maintaining and expanding settlements in the West Bank. This could give the advantage to Labour, the second largest party which currently holds 19 seats and whose members have been outspoken critics of Olmert.

To avoid new elections and a likely loss of political power and control of the Knesset, Kadima will likely have to convince Olmert to resign and either convince Shas to stay in coalition, or prepare for new elections should Shas break with them. Either way, the time left in Olmert's stay in power seems very limited, and the political future of a pivotal nation in Middle Eastern affairs seems very cloudy.