Self-Fulfilling Prophecy - Christina Larson in The New Republic: A Journal of Politics and the Arts

Obama meets the Lobby - Stephen M. Walt in Foreign Policy  (Walt returns to the subject of his bitterly controversial book, “The Lobby”)

On Versions of Goodness - Bagehot in The Economist

The New Scramble for Africa - Mark Weston in EMEA Finance

Someone give the FT a dose of valium, please - Daniel W. Drezner in Foreign Policy

The fact that Tzipi Livni and Kadima sneaked ahead of Likud and Benjamin Netanyahu by one seat in the Israeli election has allowed some analysts to spin the election as good news for the beleagured peace process. I don’t see it that way.

Its true that Livni favours trying for a two-state solution, while Netanyahu is not keen. But that’s where the good news for the peace-camp ends. There has been a big swing to the right, which will make it significantly easier for Likud to form a coalition than for Kadima.

Above all, it was a disastrous night for the left-of-centre parties. Labour were forced into fourth position, behind the ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu - a humiliating result for the party of Peres and Golda Meir. And Mertez, the most explicitly pro-peace party, were almost wiped out - they have gone down from five seats  to three seats.

These two parties probably lost votes to Livni and Kadima, as she became the obvious “stop Netanyahu” candidate. But Meretz probably also paid a price for equivocating on the Gaza war. Faced with the overwhelming popularity of the invasion in Israel, Meretz initially endorsed the attack - compromising their principles and alienating some of their natural voters. As a result, they have now even be overtaken by the “communist” party, Hadash, which opposed the war from the beginning.

I am beginning to have religious doubts. For the first time in my life, it has occurred to me that maybe the ultra-Orthodox Jews really do have a direct line to the Lord. There is a group living here in Jerusalem who regard the Israeli state as an abomination because it has been formed before the return of the Messiah. They had called upon God to signal his disapproval of Israel by smiting Tuesday’s elections with storms. And lo, it came to pass. The weather on election day was filthy: torrential rain, gale-force winds, even hail at one point. The winds were so powerful that they blew my new light-weight glasses off my face and they disappeared somewhere. So I am typing this blind. God knows what words are coming out on the screen.

Despite the weather, the elections went ahead. The exit polls suggest that Livni and Kadima will be the largest party, closely followed by Likud, with the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu and “Yvette” Lieberman beating Labour into fourth place. So Livni would get first shot at forming a government, but might not be able to secure a majority.

The likeliest scenarios in descending order seem to be: 1) A Likud-led government led by Netanyahu and dependent on votes from Lieberman and the religious parties. The snag is that the religious parties loath the pork-eating Liebermanites - and may call down a thunderstorm on them. 2) A Livni-Lieberman-Labour coalition - but this is an uneasy ideological coalition. 3) A grand coalition bringing together Kadima, Likud and Labour. All of these options seem pretty unstable, so Israel may well have elections again quite soon. This, after all, is their fifth election inside ten years.

Earlier on election day, I had lunch with some relatives. They had all cast their usual vote for the Communist Party - the only Knesset party that has both Arab and Jewish MPs. But somehow I don’t see the Commies making it into the next governing coalition.

You might expect a general election conducted just weeks after a war to be a tense affair. But, as Israel prepares to go to the polls this week, the country does not feel on edge. The joggers on Tel Aviv’s beaches pound up and down in the surf, oblivious to the anarchy and violence an hour’s drive away in the Gaza Strip.

Nobody seems to expect anything much to change as a result of Tuesday’s vote. Israeli politicians like to talk about “existential” threats to their country, but they are still avoiding existential choices about the future of Israel. Anybody looking for something that might break the bloody deadlock between Israel and the Palestinians needs to look outside the colourful, but dysfunctional, world of Israeli politics. The best hope – slim though it may be – is the Obama administration.

It is not yet clear whether Israel’s next prime minister will be Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the rightwing Likud party, or Tzipi Livni, head of the centrist Kadima party. But all the pre-election polls suggest one clear trend: a distinct move to the right. The Labour party, the traditional standard-bearer of the left, is in danger of being pushed into fourth position behind a radical, rightwing party, Yisrael Beiteinu. Meretz, the peaceniks’ party, will be an also-ran.

The remainder of the article can be read here. Please post comments below.

I am in Israel this evening. Election posters are everywhere and there is lots of excitement ahead of the vote on Tuesday. But visiting Hebron market on the West Bank this afternoon, I didn’t find any Palestinians who seemed to think the result would make much difference to them.

Even though the Palestinians are studiously indifferent to the Israeli elections, their own politics are on the move. Hamas have always been strong in Hebron - and the general opinion seemed to be that the war in Gaza had strengthened support for them in the West Bank as well. One woman trader I spoke to didn’t seem too happy about it. “If Hamas take power in the West Bank”, she said, “it will be very bad for women. They will make me close my stall down.”

I’ve never seen anywhere on the West Bank where Israeli settlers and Palestinians live so close together as in Hebron. The town is now effectively divided by check-points, walls and metal gates - all policed by a very heavy Israeli military presence. The Israeli side seemed comatose this afternoon, a combination of the fact that it was the Sabbath and that there are only 400 settlers, guarded by hundreds more troops. I saw one extravagantly bearded man out for a stroll with his family - a charming scene, apart from the fact that he had a machine-gun strapped across his chest. Continue reading "In Hebron market"

The BBC are under attack for refusing to broadcast a charity appeal for people made homeless in Gaza. The Observer newspaper claims that the BBC has been thrown into crisis by the decision. Jon Snow, a veteran broadcaster, calls the decision “ludicrous”. Douglas Alexander, a government minister, has called upon the BBC to re-consider. Tim Llwellyn, a former BBC correspondent, accuses his former employer of “cowardice”.

But I think the BBC are right. Broadcasting a charity appeal for Gaza at this particular moment would compromise the corporation’s impartiality. This is not a disaster caused by a tsuanami or an earthquake. It is not an Act of God. It is the product of a highly controversial war - and for the BBC to broadcast appeals for humanitarian relief for Palestinian victims would inevitably be seen as a political act.

This is not to say that I think that firepower the Israelis unleashed on Gaza was justifiable - I don’t, I think it was appalling. But the BBC’s most important job is to report on what is going on, and its most important asset is its credibility. I think BBC reporters have done a pretty good job in this latest crisis. But they are routinely attacked for “bias”, particularly in the United States and Israel. Why play into the hands of their critics? There are plenty of other avenues for charities to appeal for help for the Palestinians.

So - more than 1,200 deaths later - who won? Israel has announced that it has achieved its goals and called a ceasefire - conveniently enough, just two days before Obama’s inauguration. Hamas says that it has also won and has also declared a ceasefire.

Both sides can claim a victory of sorts. Israel will say that it has stopped the rockets. Hamas has survived. Israel will say that it has re-established its deterrent power. Hamas will believe that it has proved its status as the real face of Palestinian resistance.

And then there is the battle for world opinion. It was probably shrewd of Hamas to declare its own ceasefire in response to Israel’s. A decision to keep firing rockets would have fitted the Israeli narrative that Hamas cared little for innocent Palestinian lives. On the other hand, the Israelis will have been encouraged that so many European leaders - Sarkozy, Brown, Merkel, Zapatero - were prepared to pose for photos with the Israeli leadership today.

The fate of Hamas and of its armed struggle against Israel will only become clear over the next few months. Gauging the impact of the conflict on the broader region will take even longer. At the risk of sounding like a liberal hand-wringer, it seems to me that in the long run everybody loses - Palestine is even more smashed-up, embittered and dysfunctional than when the fighting began, and Israel has created more enemies and pushed the prospect of peace ever further into the distance. And over 1.200 people are dead.

Neither Israel nor Hamas seem particularly inclined to heed the UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. The Israelis, in particular, tend to shrug off condemnation by the UN, which they regard as an incorrigibly anti-Israeli body. You can understand why. The UN Human Rights Council, for example, has adopted far more resolutions condemning Israel than any other country. Both Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-Moon have criticised the council for singling out Israel.

That said, I think Israel will still view Thursday night’s Security Council resolution with some concern for a couple of reasons. The Security Council is the serious bit of the UN. And it is hard for Israel to dismiss the UN altogether - after all, its owes its very existence as a state to UN resolutions.

But the most significant thing about the UN resolution was that, as the FT’s Tobias Buck puts it - “for the first time in many years, the US declined to veto a Security Council resolution opposed by Israel.” And that’s even before the Obama administration takes power.

Any weakening in American support for Israel at the UN would be a significant departure.  Some US ambassadors to the UN have become famous for their staunch support of Israel - Daniel Moynihan was a particularly strong example in the 1970s, and Jeanne Kirkpatrick and John Bolton were also dogged supporters. Susan Rice, Obama’s ambassasdor to the UN, will certainly hew to a pro-Israeli line. But I doubt that she sees herself making her mark by last-ditch defences of the embattled Jewish state. Thursday’s vote might be a sign of the coming times.