Israeli Transition

After I wrote about the Israeli electoral system earlier this week, there has been a major development in that country's politics.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has announced that he will resign as leader of his Kadima party, and thereby as prime minister, once a successor is elected. The party will hold a primary election on September 17 to choose that successor.

Olmert is implicated in a corruption scandal. He has also been criticized for his handling of the 2006 war against the Hezbollah faction in Lebanon. A general election is due by 2010. As in the United Kingdom, the timing of Israeli elections is variable. Olmert has resisted calls for an early election; polls have shown that the Likud party, led by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, would emerge as the strongest party. The Kadima party was formed in 2005, when then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon left Likud along with several other leading members of Likud, to form a more-centrist party. Olmert took over the leadership of Kadima when Sharon was incapacitated by a stroke in 2006.

Here is a Reuters article that cites polls showing that Kadima would erase its poll gap against Likud, if it elects the most likely candidate for leader, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. If her party chooses her, she would become the second female prime minister of Israel, the first having been Golda Meir, who held that position from 1969 to 1974.