Hillel Halkin writes in The New York Sun that there should be immediate elections in Israel:
If the turnout for the election of a prime minister in a parliamentary democracy has ever in history been only 1% of a nation’s population, I’m not aware of it. Yet this is what it is scheduled to happen in Israel on September 17 when the country’s ruling party, Kadima, holds a primary vote to pick a successor to Ehud Olmert. Kadima is estimated to have some 70,000 registered voters, not all of whom will go to the polls. The population of Israelis some 6.5 million.
This is an absurd situation. It would be bad enough if Kadima were a party that stood for something in Israeli political life . . . . But this is hardly the case. . . . Kadima is a party that, once it became clear that West Bank disengagement was a no-starter, has had no distinctive policies of it own. . . . And if Kadima has no distinctive policies of its own, the two leading contenders to succeed Mr. Olmert, Foreign Minister Tsipi Livni and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, have no distinctive policies of any kind.
Although Ms. Livni has been, together with Mr. Olmert, in charge of conducting the negotiations with the Palestinian Authority that commenced after last November’s Annapolis conference, no one knows to this day what she believes about Israel’s final borders, the desirable status of Jerusalem, or any other issues that are part of the "peace process." . . . .
. . . Ms. Livni is a blandly personable woman who keeps tossing the hair out of her eyes; Mr. Mofaz is a blandly personable man whose bald head looks polished by a shoeshine boy. The hope for the woman is that if Kadima has to run in national elections, she can beat Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud. The hope for the man is that Kadima will not have to run in national elections because he can keep Mr. Olmert’s shaky coalition together.
Israelis deserve better than having their next leader selected from one of these two figures by less people than it would take to fill a football stadium. They deserve national elections now.
Caroline Glick writes in The Jerusalem Post on “Kadima’s Legacy of Nothingness:”
From 1977 when Likud first rose to power until 2006 when Kadima formed the government, all of Israel’s elections revolved around contrasting ideologies. For 29 years, voters were required to choose which side of the ideological divide they preferred. And making choices isn’t easy. Both sides seem to have something to offer.
Then Kadima entered the political stage dead on center and offered voters a way to avoid making a decision. It professed to be all things to all people.
But of course, no one and no political party can be all things to all people. And since Kadima’s leaders won’t choose whose side they are on for longer than opinion polls stay constant, their party has been nothing to all people.
Here it bears noting that Olmert’s slow, meandering exit from office against the backdrop of growing dangers is a fitting end to this sad chapter in Israel’s history. For when a government of nothings is running the show, nothing takes precedent over all things – even the most important things. It can only be hoped that when the next election takes place, voters will have learned the lesson of Kadima. Whether we choose the right ideological camp or the wrong one to lead us, we cannot evade our responsibility to make a choice.
In the United States, a clear choice is shaping up for November in an election now only 91 days away. It is ironic that, in Israel, its repudiated prime minister may still be in office at that time (unless he is indicted), his party with its new leader chosen by less than 35,000 party “members” looking for partners to form a coalition to stay in power, in order to avoid an election.