Israeli Political Roundup - Party's Over Edition
Shimon Peres is going to quit the Labor party:
Former Labor chairman Shimon Peres is expected to announce his departure of the Labor Party upon his return from Barcelona on Wednesday. According to Israel Radio, if indeed Peres proceeds as expected, he would not formally join Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's new party, but he would support Kadima from outside, and would be appointed Sharon's special representative for peace negotiations...
If Peres accepts the deal, he would not run for the next Knesset, ending a record-long tenure in the parliament that goes back to 1959... A Labor official... said that [Peres] was... steamed at Peretz for refusing to reserve the second slot on the Labor list for him after initially offering him the slot. Peretz said the only slot he could give him was the symbolic 120th slot.
Adding insult to injury is clearly the proper way to treat the elder party statesman who has resuscitated the party countless times. Peretz is such a scary hack that the far far Left-wing Meretz party has announced that they'd join the next Sharon government because they're counting on Left-wing voters being more scared of Peretz than Sharon. So when you see mainstream American Leftists like the Boston Globe editorialists straying into Israeli politics...
Voters in Israel's Labor Party demonstrated one of the virtues of democracy this week when they elected Amir Peretz, head of the Histadrut trade union confederation, as chairman of their party, replacing 82-year-old Shimon Peres, a brilliant statesman who has been an inveterate loser in domestic politics.
... you can be quite sure that not only do they not read blogs, but they pretty much don't read the news.
One other thing to watch this week: the effect that defections to Sharon are having on smaller parties. The article on Meretz is above, and National Union MK Michael Nudelman already joined Kadima/National Responsibility Party on Sunday (bringing support from the Russian community with him). There is even talk of Arab parties joining Sharon's new party. But in the final analysis, small moves may be irrelevant - if you can get past the sniveling resentment at the beginning, the end of Akiva Eldar's article in today's Ha'aretz has a very serviceable discussion of how giving voters real Left, Right, and Center parties will yield potentially terminal problems for smaller parties.
UPDATE: Shimon Peres and Dalia Itzik are joining Sharon's party. Fav graf:
"We have no doubt that the two most experienced people in Israeli politics will continue to lead the country," a Sharon associate said. "This is a blow for Labor chairman Amir Peretz, whose inexperience will be even more blatant now."
