Kadima Contemplates the Abyss

The Fatah-Hamas reconciliation is likely to be bad news—especially for those unfortunates now likely to be targeted by Palestinian terror.  The first victim of the Fatah-Hamas rapprochement, however, is Israel’s largest opposition party—Kadima.  Its raison d’etre has just disappeared.

After the 2009 elections, a majority of the Knesset nominated Binyamin Netanyahu to the post of Prime Minister.  Netanyahu offered to take Kadima into his coalition and make Livni his #2.  Livni refused.  She took Kadima into opposition, where she has since argued that she can make peace with the Palestinians where Binyamin Netanyahu cannot.

Kadima’s peacemaking policy was founded upon the Hamas-Fatah rift.  Negotiations with Abu Mazen were possible even in theory only because Hamas, which insists on Israel’s destruction, mounted a coup d’etat against Fatah in Gaza in 2007 and was kicked out of the Palestinian coalition government.  With the reunion of Hamas and Fatah, Kadima is left without a policy.  80% of the Israel’s Jewish public probably agrees with Binyamin Netanyahu that it's impossible to negotiate with a Palestinian government, half of which wants Israel dead.  Almost everybody in Kadima also agrees with Netanyahu.  There hasn’t been a word from anyone in the party about the possibility of negotiation since the Hamas-Fatah deal was announced.  For Kadima, that means political oblivion beckons at the next election. 

Instead, the deal Livni refused two years ago has started to look pretty good.  In a revealing op-ed in the Jerusalem Post, Tzahi Hanegbi, a one-time Kadima MK convicted of graft who expects to run in the next elections, had the effrontery to suggest a text for “Bibi’s speech,” to be given in front of Congress in a few weeks’ time.  Scheduled before the fatah-Hamas reconciliation, this speech was supposed to include some grand new diplomatic initiative.  Those expectations have since diminished considerably.

Hanegbi, in fact, has nothing whatsoever to suggest regarding a diplomatic initiative toward the Palestinians.  Everything he has Netanyahu saying about them in his draft is nothing more than Netanyahu is already saying today:  No deal is possible.  Instead, Hanegbi’s proposed new “diplomatic initiative” involves an offer by Netanyahu to Kadima:  To prove to the world he is serious about peace, Netanyahu should offer to make Livni his foreign minister, to be in charge of negotiations with the Palestinians when and if they becoming possible.  Livni will prove to the world that Netanyahu is serious about peace, even though both Netanyahu and Livni now agree that peace negotiations are impossible.

Yeah, that sounds a little forced to me, too.

What’s really happening is that Kadima thinks it will be a lot easier to get someone, anyone, to vote for the party if the party’s bigwigs come to the next elections ensconced in ministerial office.  That will allow them to talk about how they’ve built roads, or absorbed immigrants, or—well, anything but that hopeless peace business.  They hope to save their political skins by riding on the Likud’s political coattails.

To support this analysis, let me mention that I was told this week by a reliable source on the Israeli right that Shlomo Mula, Kadima’s Ethiopian MK, told her that he hopes Netanyahu will now take Kadima into his government.  Mula is clearly hoping to stir up public support for the idea (my source isn’t even in the Likud).

Of course, Likud needs Kadima right now like a hole in the head.  Likud’s best move right now is probably to conduct a vigorous, aggressive PR campaign about how Israel has to gird itself for a situation in which peace has become impossible—and go to elections on the issue within six months.  That will probably give the Likud the dominant political position it sought and failed to achieve last time around.  For Kadima, it means that most of the party’s MKs will have to apply themselves to an unfamiliar and unwelcome activity—looking for work.