Israeli Political Roundup - These Are Not the Elections You're Looking For
It's "annoying, snarky ellipse day" at Mere Rhetoric. All posts will end with annoying, snarky ellipses which allow you to smugly roll your eyes and snigger about how stupid your political opponents are. There are a number of reasons for why today is "annoying, snarky ellipse day," but most of them have to do with how much easier it is to be snotty than to actually make a political point (ask the KosKidz) - and I'm tired. Sorry.
Huge, breathless news from Yedioth: Likud knows that the government will fall, gears up for elections! Has Sharon finally pushed things too far? Does he know that he'll be punished for disengagement in the budget vote? Not really:
The document should be a warning sign to Likud members not to topple a Likud government for the third time, Deputy Defense Minister Zeev Boim said. His remarks were in response to Ynet's report of a classified Likud document outlining plans for election preparations should the government fail to secure a majority for the state budget proposal.
Do the math: Likud currently has an unprecedented 40 Knesset seats, so the little push from Labor (21) and UTJ (5) gives Sharon a Knesset majority. There are 12 or 13 Likud "rebels" - MKs who say they'll vote against the budget in order to express opposition to disengagement, theoretically toppling the government (if the budget isn't passed by March 31st, the government automatically falls). The catch is that only 5 or 6 of them actually seem willing to bring down the government, not enough to bring down the government. Why is that? Most of the rebels (not coincidentally, all but 5 or 6) are relatively unknown, and so they're toward the bottom of the Likud list. If Israel went to elections again, there's no way Likud would win 40 seats again: meaning that the rebels would be out of the Knesset, out of political power, and out of a job (which is one of the reasons why, when push comes to shove, they're convienetly absent).
Not that the rebels will ever have a chance to really matter. There's nothing like the cloud of making a monumental, irredeemable mistake of historical proportions to clarify what matters:
The Shinui faction would be willing to return to the government even if United Torah Judaism remains a part of it, to help PM implement the disengagement plan which it strongly supports, MK Avraham Poraz told Haaretz Monday... the reason for Shinui's change of heart was... the party's voters have recently been exerting heavy pressure on its leaders not to vote against the budget and risk toppling the government.
Getting sworn political enemies to break iron-clad promises was breakfast. By lunch, Sharon scored a major diplomatic victory by convincing Bush - despite the best efforts of the most refined international diplomats - that it might matter whether or not the Palestinians dismantle terrorist organizations:
Jerusalem is already convinced that the EU would like to shortcut the road map, and move as soon as possible to political negotiations between Israel and the PA on final-status issues, even before the terrorist infrastructure is dealt with, as spelled out in phase one of the road map. Dismantling the terrorist infrastructure is a hard process that will take time and patience, a patience Jerusalem doesn't believe the world has much of. This sense was strengthened by British Prime Minister Tony Blair's comments at the London meeting.
"There's probably no more pressing political challenge than to move this process forward because it has a relevance on the streets of Britain, on the streets of European countries as well as in the Middle East itself," [Blair] said... [In contrast Bush] said, "And the first reform must be the dismantling of terrorist organizations.
It's almost as if who gets chosen President matters for Israel...
Huge, breathless news from Yedioth: Likud knows that the government will fall, gears up for elections! Has Sharon finally pushed things too far? Does he know that he'll be punished for disengagement in the budget vote? Not really:
The document should be a warning sign to Likud members not to topple a Likud government for the third time, Deputy Defense Minister Zeev Boim said. His remarks were in response to Ynet's report of a classified Likud document outlining plans for election preparations should the government fail to secure a majority for the state budget proposal.
Do the math: Likud currently has an unprecedented 40 Knesset seats, so the little push from Labor (21) and UTJ (5) gives Sharon a Knesset majority. There are 12 or 13 Likud "rebels" - MKs who say they'll vote against the budget in order to express opposition to disengagement, theoretically toppling the government (if the budget isn't passed by March 31st, the government automatically falls). The catch is that only 5 or 6 of them actually seem willing to bring down the government, not enough to bring down the government. Why is that? Most of the rebels (not coincidentally, all but 5 or 6) are relatively unknown, and so they're toward the bottom of the Likud list. If Israel went to elections again, there's no way Likud would win 40 seats again: meaning that the rebels would be out of the Knesset, out of political power, and out of a job (which is one of the reasons why, when push comes to shove, they're convienetly absent).
Not that the rebels will ever have a chance to really matter. There's nothing like the cloud of making a monumental, irredeemable mistake of historical proportions to clarify what matters:
The Shinui faction would be willing to return to the government even if United Torah Judaism remains a part of it, to help PM implement the disengagement plan which it strongly supports, MK Avraham Poraz told Haaretz Monday... the reason for Shinui's change of heart was... the party's voters have recently been exerting heavy pressure on its leaders not to vote against the budget and risk toppling the government.
Getting sworn political enemies to break iron-clad promises was breakfast. By lunch, Sharon scored a major diplomatic victory by convincing Bush - despite the best efforts of the most refined international diplomats - that it might matter whether or not the Palestinians dismantle terrorist organizations:
Jerusalem is already convinced that the EU would like to shortcut the road map, and move as soon as possible to political negotiations between Israel and the PA on final-status issues, even before the terrorist infrastructure is dealt with, as spelled out in phase one of the road map. Dismantling the terrorist infrastructure is a hard process that will take time and patience, a patience Jerusalem doesn't believe the world has much of. This sense was strengthened by British Prime Minister Tony Blair's comments at the London meeting.
"There's probably no more pressing political challenge than to move this process forward because it has a relevance on the streets of Britain, on the streets of European countries as well as in the Middle East itself," [Blair] said... [In contrast Bush] said, "And the first reform must be the dismantling of terrorist organizations.
It's almost as if who gets chosen President matters for Israel...
