Word: olmert
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...more hawkish, conservative Likud party, more dovish and liberal Labor party and a whole slew of other smaller factions. Judging from the polls, this will hold true in next Tuesday's elections, in which the front-running, self-described centrist Kadima party, headed by acting prime minister Ehud Olmert, is expected to garner less than 40 seats. Kadima will need partners, and increasingly, it looks like one of those may well be Avigdor Lieberman, a gravel-voiced settler, originally from Moldovia, whose views of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are described by critics as "racist" and "fascist...
...Olmert is acting standoffish, declaring that he would never invite Lieberman - or anyone else who isn't willing to withdraw from large parts of the West Bank - to join his future coalition. Olmert's plans for dealing with the Palestinians, which he inherited from Sharon, center on withdrawing many, though not all, Jewish settlements from the West Bank within four years, while maintaining military outposts near the Jordanian border and the West Bank separation barrier built in recent years to prevent suicide bombers from entering the country...
...before talking to Israel, whose security officials say they expect it will take Haniya and his team at least a year to clear away Fatah's corruption. But Hamas may not have much respite; on March 28, Israel holds an election. The Kadima party of acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, leading in the polls, plans to draw permanent borders between Israel and the Palestinian territories, whether Hamas is willing to negotiate or not. That would test Haniya like nothing else. And he must know that if his militants take up the gun again, no amount of security outside his Gaza...
...read too much into this. Hamas did not campaign on the question of Israel. They won because they stood for change, and they weren't associated with corruption. No matter who had won, the only peace process for the foreseeable future was one of continued Israeli withdrawal. If Ehud Olmert wins the upcoming election in Israel, the Israelis will make several withdrawals from the West Bank and then say, "We'll only go beyond here if we have a Palestinian partner." My sense is, no matter what happened last week, we'd have several years of sorting...
...been a lot of progress lately in the quest for peace. Abbas and the Fatah-dominated parliament were too weak to force radical groups like Hamas to lay down their weapons--a prerequisite for further talks. Israel under Sharon, meanwhile, had decided to go it alone, a policy that Olmert is expected to continue. Absent any breakthrough, Israel is likely to make some further withdrawals from the West Bank and then, perhaps, establish its borders unilaterally. That could force Hamas' hand. "What is going to force them to change their stance is the fact that if they don't participate...