Thursday's outcome will help determine whether Kadima is a third way, or another dead end.
By JERUSALEM POST STAFFKadima candidates 224.88(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
By Thursday morning, if its leadership contest is resolved on the first round, we'll know who'll lead Kadima. But the real question is: Can the party ever offer a genuine "third way" alternative to Likud and Labor?
Some 74,000 Kadima members are eligible to vote; the results will be counted overnight. Surveys predict that Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni will defeat Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz, with Public Security Minister Avi Dichter and Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit trailing way behind. But Mofaz is well organized, and Livni - unlike her rival - is not prematurely declaring victory.
Whoever wins is going to have to construct a new coalition. Mofaz will find it easier to entice the pivotal Shas Party to support his leadership of Kadima because he's prepared to acquiesce in their demands for increased child allowances and more cash for haredi schools. Livni says she'll be less forthcoming, making the prospects of her forming a stable government dicier.
It remains to be seen whether Olmert will honor his pledge to step aside after the primary to enable the victor to lead both the party and the government. He may wait until the winner puts together a coalition, or stay on until early elections in March 2009.
IT'S A LOT easier to explain where Kadima came from than what it stands for.
In February 2001, the Likud's Ariel Sharon was elected to navigate the country through the bloody Aksa intifada. Sharon believed, by December 2003, that he'd gotten the security situation in hand, but that Israel's diplomatic position vis-a-vis the US and Europe remained untenable. He recognized the Palestinian Arab demographic threat, and the fact that Israel had no Palestinian negotiating partner. So he came up with a controversial concept: unilateral disengagement.
Sharon had strong popular support for this approach - except within his own party. He lost a referendum 60-40, in May 2004, but had sufficient cabinet and Knesset support to go ahead anyway in August-September 2005 with uprooting Jewish settlers in Gaza and parts of the northern West Bank.
Having alienated the Likud faithful, Sharon quit the party in November 2005 and formed Kadima, attracting centrist politicians from both Labor and Likud.
Sharon headed a transitional Kadima government, readying the party for elections, but suffered a disabling stroke in January 2006.
Olmert, who became caretaker premier, won the March 2006 elections promising to continue along Sharon's pragmatic path. But Hamas's kidnapping of Gilad Schalit in June 2006, its relentless shelling of Sderot, and the government's abysmal handling of the Second Lebanon War later that summer essentially deflated Olmert's premiership.
Since the Annapolis meeting in November 2007, Olmert and Livni have led what appear to be fruitless negotiations on a "shelf agreement" with PA leader Mahmoud Abbas.
IGNORING the Winograd Committee's recommendations and the crippling effects of a slew of corruption investigations, Olmert put his political survival ahead of country and party. Only recently did he agree to go. With this kind of leadership, is it any wonder that Kadima suffers from arrested political development?
Many of it "members" - in whose hands the fate of the nation may rest - have come to Kadima not out of ideological conviction (though some did during Sharon's tenure), but because they were recruited by the four leadership candidates. More troubling still are those who will be delivered to the polls by "brokers" - old-style political bosses who trade the support of large sectoral voting blocs in the hope of patronage.
THERE'S A strong case to be made for a centrist third way party. But if Kadima wants to rehabilitate itself and provide that possibility, it needs to address Israel's tough security dilemmas with the right combination of diplomatic savvy and military toughness. On the Palestinians, the Right has a record of criticizing without offering alternatives, while the Left ignores the harsh realities on the ground. Kadima must demonstrate a viable alternative.
The party also needs to spearhead electoral reform and define an economic platform that jettisons dogmatism in favor of policies that will grow the economy while caring for the less fortunate. Finally, it needs to champion Jewish tradition in an environment of pluralism and tolerance.
Thursday's outcome will help determine whether Kadima is a third way, or another dead end.
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