Israelis Go to the Polls

Unreconstructed terrorist organization Hamas wins elections in what will someday become Palestine. Ariel Sharon suffers a stroke that shakes Israel, indeed the entire region, to its core. In his wake he leaves a new political party, Kadima, in something of a state of identity crisis. It is odd, then, that the pending elections have been so uneventful. Etgar Keret's Op-Ed in today's Times is self-indulgent, containing as it does an anecdote about his father trying marijuana for the first time by way of a barely germane illustration, but it does make something of a compelling case for a low-key election. Over at The New Republic, Yossi Klein Halevi less sanguinely attributes the mood in Israel to "despair." To wit:

These are Israel's saddest elections, the first with barely a mention of peace. In the past, even right-wing candidates had to hold out the promise that a hard line would bring a more trustworthy peace than the left's concessions, that "peace for generations," as one right-wing slogan went, would be more durable than peace now. Few really believed in 1996 that Benjamin Netanyahu would manage "a secure peace," or that "only Sharon will bring peace," as the 2001 Likud slogan put it. But failure to pay lip service to peace meant damning yourself as an unelectable fanatic.

Whatever your take, you can find the best election coverage at Haaretz and The Jerusalem Times.

On a related issue, I have been hoping for a couple of weeks to mention Irshad Manji's recent Times piece, "How I Learned to Love the Wall" (Behind the noxious Times Select firewall, alas.) The headline is awful, and reminds me of how almost every editor I have had for any sort of opinion piece has managed to provide a worse title than the one I always offer. Nonetheless, the piece is fantastic, revealing deep ambivalence but ultimate support for the wall, the very existence of which is unfortunate but necessary. I have a hard time excerpting just a part of it for flavor, and the piece is so good that there is no "money abstract," but this seems to capture manji's feelings fairly well:

After all, this barrier, although built by Mr. Sharon, was birthed by ''shaheeds,'' suicide bombers whom Palestinian leaders have glorified as martyrs. Qassam missiles can kill two or three people at a time. Suicide bombers lay waste to many more. Since the barrier went up, suicide attacks have plunged, which means innocent Arab lives have been spared along with Jewish ones. Does a concrete effort to save civilian lives justify the hardship posed by this structure? The humanitarian in me bristles, but ultimately answers yes.

As does this:

For all the closings, however, Israel is open enough to tolerate lawsuits by civil society groups who despise every mile of the barrier. Mr. Sharon himself agreed to reroute sections of it when the Israel High Court ruled in favor of the complainants. Where else in the Middle East can Arabs and Jews work together so visibly to contest, and change, state policies?

And this:

Like all Muslims, I look forward to the day when neither the jeep nor the wall is in Abu Dis. So will we tell the self-appointed martyrs of Islam that the people -- not just Arabs, but Arabs and Jews -- ''are one''? That before the barrier, there was the bomber? And that the barrier can be dismantled, but the bomber's victims are gone forever?

It is far too early to tell if tomorrow's elections will be epochal or simply another transitory moment. But the reality is that whichever party or coalition carries the day will face ongoing difficulties that have not much changed, and with Hamas' ascent may have gotten worse. Until that state of things changes, the wall may continue to be a sadly necessary manifestation.