Israel: A miserable lot

Feb 1st 2007 | JERUSALEM
From The Economist print edition

Why Israelis feel their country is suffering from a malaise

FROM time to time, regular visitors to Israel comment that the people who live there have lost their usually insatiable appetite for talking politics. It last happened in 2002, when the waves of suicide-bombings at the height of the second Palestinian intifada shocked Israelis into numbness. Now it is happening again.

As in 2002, Israel feels itself to be facing new threats. The collapse of the Palestinian Authority into factional fighting (see article) offers no reliable partner for a peace deal. Iran's pursuit of a nuclear capability creates a potential existential threat. The recent war against the guerrillas of Hizbullah in Lebanon highlighted the shortcomings of the mighty Israeli army in this new kind of warfare.

But as Ari Shavit, a columnist for the liberal daily, Haaretz, wrote last autumn, Israel now faces an “intra-Israeli threat”. The prime minister, Ehud Olmert, is under investigation for allegations ranging from dishonest property trading to trying improperly to influence the privatisation of a bank. The finance minister is being probed for embezzlement, the tax-authority head for fraud. The president faces multiple charges of rape. This week a former justice minister was convicted of forcibly kissing a young woman soldier, which could land him in jail for up to three years. The army chief of staff has resigned over the Lebanon war; this month a commission of inquiry is set to shine a harsh light on the performance of army and government.

Mr Olmert's plan to pull settlements out of the West Bank unilaterally to make way for a Palestinian state, on which he was elected less than a year ago, is dead for now, but he has no other programme. The angst-ridden newspaper commentariat throws around words like “rudderless”, “corrupt”, “wretched” and “vacuum”. And in this vacuum, one of the most popular public figures is not a politician but Arkady Gaydamak, a populist billionaire who spreads his money around like water and unashamedly proclaims his desire to be a kingmaker behind the scenes.

In such straits, politicians are sometimes open to new ideas. Some intellectuals who favour peace talks with Syria as an alternative to the “Palestinian track” are calling on the government to give it a try. Mr Olmert, however, brought the right-wing nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party into his coalition last autumn, which shields the government from collapse but also blocks serious pro-peace moves.

What makes for general gloom is that no obvious alternative is in sight. If elections were held now, according to a poll this week for the Ynet news website, Mr Olmert's Kadima party and Labour, its coalition partner, would each collapse to nine Knesset seats from 29 and 18 (out of 120) now. The right-wing Likud, led by Binyamin Netanyahu, would jump from 12 seats to 32. However, it is far from clear what programme he would offer instead.

A Labour leadership battle in May could bring back Ehud Barak, the prime minister who led Israel into the ill-fated Camp David talks in 2000 and the second intifada. He may have matured since then; but a prospective rerun of the 1999 race between him and Mr Netanyahu gives many an uncomfortable feeling of déjà vu.