When Americans vote on Tuesday, Israel will mark the killing of a leader that exposed a bitter divide in its democracy. This legacy will haunt any effort by the new man in the White House to bring peace to the Middle East. On Nov. 4, 1995, the shooting of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by an Orthodox Jewish radical laid bare the gulf between Israelis who want to swap occupied land for peace with the Palestinians, and those who see that as fatal weakness or treason. Rabin was the first native-born Israeli leader and the only one to be assassinated. His “crime” was signing the 1993 Oslo accords recognising Palestinians' right to their own state in return for Yasser Arafat's acceptance of Israel's existence. The hatreds left by the killing are fresh: plans to screen anniversary interviews from jail with his unrepentant assassin were cancelled after they leaked and provoked outrage. And 13 years on, the Palestinians still have no state. The West Bank is still under occupation. The Gaza Strip is in the hands of Hamas sworn to Israel's destruction. Israel, proud to proclaim itself the freest democracy in the Middle East, is again in a state of political limbo, facing a February election and the failure of the latest US-sponsored peace push as President George W. Bush leaves the White House. “It's time to end the farce,” left-wing Israeli commentator Gideon Levy wrote. The endless peace process must be replaced by active decisions: “War or peace, annexation and a state of all its people, or dividing the land into two sovereign states”. Few Israel leaders dare to put the choice so starkly. Voters are torn between security demands they believe justify occupying Palestinians' land, and a wish for a state that is Jewish and so cannot absorb millions of Arab voters. Israel Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, in a candid September interview, said “what no previous Israeli leader has ever said: we should withdraw from almost all of the territories”. He has also said Israel must not tolerate “pogroms” against Palestinians by Jewish settlers on a religious mission to make the West Bank Israeli forever, or put up with threats by hardliners to attack Israeli soldiers who get in their way. But Olmert has resigned to fight corruption charges and was speaking while in caretaker mode. Pity, said the Palestinians. Both camps split Israelis may feel envy as Americans enjoy democracy's most satisfying moment on Tuesday – a clear choice they believe will make a difference. Israeli choices are constrained by a system which lets special-interest parties punch above their weight. The religious Shas party sank efforts by Olmert's designated successor Tzipi Livni to form a new coalition over her readiness to negotiate sharing Jerusalem with a new Palestinian state. And Shas can make or break the next government coalition, too. Palestinians are also split, between President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah and Hamas, which won a 2006 parliamentary election. There is little optimism that Barack Obama or John McCain can broker peace in such circumstances in their first year. But many Western analysts say the next US president will be unable to just leave the Middle East to its own devices for long. American David Aaron, Middle East policy director at the RAND Corporation, says that while there may be temptation to “kick the can down the road ... we cannot put together a regional coalition without making progress on this issue”. “It has been in many ways a black hole, a graveyard of US foreign policy,” said Chris Pang of the Royal United Services Institute in London. “But I don't think it will be on the back-burner, regardless of who is in the White House.” While the context of peace talks can be framed by outside partners including Washington, “personality matters in the peace process”, Pang said. Israelis must decide if centrist Livni or Benjamin Netanyahu of the right-wing Likud is their next leader. “Ironically,” he noted, “it was Netanyahu who took peace forward,” when he was prime minister in the 1990s. Some Israelis remain sceptical. Ilan Pappe, whose histories of Israel's establishment at the expense of the Arabs anger many on the right, says Washington will “give Israel a free hand”. “The Israelis will complete the fence and the wall around the West Bank, tighten their strangulation of the Gaza Strip and expand their hold over the areas they covet,” he said. How much the Palestinians will resist this remains an open question. Does any of it matter to American voters? In an iconoclastic 2007 paper “The Middle of Nowhere”, US analyst Edward Luttwak questioned that. Middle East doomsayers regularly warn that “it's five minutes to midnight”, he wrote. But “what actually happens at each of these ‘moments of truth' is – nothing much.” Now there is talk of reviving a 2002 Arab initiative offering normal ties with all Arab countries if Palestinians get a viable state, refugees are cared for and Jerusalem is shared. Aaron at RAND says Israel should respond positively, instead of “treating it like a dirty diaper” as it first did. There may not be much left actually to negotiate, he says. “Everybody knows what the deal is.” – Reuters __
