Israeli General Election

This story was overshadowed by the American presidential election, but the sequence of events that was set in motion by the resignation of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel, that I wrote about in this and earlier posts, is now leading toward an early general election.

Tzipi Livni, the new leader of the Kadima Party, which is the largest party in Israel's parliament, the Knesset, has failed to put together a coalition government. That necessitates the general election, which is scheduled for February 10, 2009.

As I described in this post and also in this post, there are several parties who compete in Israeli general elections, which are based on pure proportional representation. But three of those parties are the main competitors.

Kadima was founded in 2005, when then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and some of his allies left the Likud Party. Sharon suffered a major stroke soon thereafter, and the party was then led by Olmert. Kadima elected Livni as its new leader in September of this year, but Olmert will continue as caretaker prime minister until the election.

The Likud leader is Benjamin Netanyahu. He was prime minister from 1996 to 1999. After failing to win reelection, he was replaced as Likud leader by Sharon. Netanyahu again became party leader, after Sharon left Likud.

The Labor Party is led by Ehud Barak. He succeeded Netanyahu as prime minister in 1999, but was defeated for reelection by Sharon in 2001. Barak is currently minister of defense in a coalition government with Kadima.

Netanyahu is more of a hawk on the issue of negotiations with the Palestinians than are his opponents. However, this Associated Press report quotes him as saying he would not abandon those negotiations. Any such negotiations are probably in limbo anyway, until the incoming Obama Administration makes its position known.

Here is a Jerusalem Post report about a poll indicating a tie between Likud and Kadima.