The task the Israelis have set us

The performance in the Israeli elections of Kadima, the new centrist party founded by Ariel Sharon, is almost as remarkable as the survival of the state of Israel itself in the 58 years since its foundation. True, Kadima did not secure the clear mandate for which the acting Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, had hoped. Turnout was also disappointingly low.

But Kadima, the breakaway group formed after Mr Sharon dramatically left Likud last year, has emerged as easily the biggest single party and will lead a coalition to form the next government. As The Spectator goes to press, the precise complexion of that coalition is impossible to judge. Mr Olmert faces an unenviable task in cobbling together an administration. The right-wing Likud, under Benjamin Netanyahu, has been humiliated. Labour, under Amir Peretz, effectively holds the balance of power in the 120-seat Knesset. But Mr Peretz will exact a heavy price for his support.

The more striking point, however, is that the Israeli people should have voted as they did in such numbers, in such circumstances. Kadima’s ethos was summarised in an article by Mr Olmert published in the daily Yediot Ahronot shortly before the poll: ‘We will determine the line of the security fence, and we will make sure that no Jewish settlements will be left on the other side of the fence. Drawing the final borders is our obligation as leaders and as a society.’

Mr Sharon’s historic insight — and Mr Olmert’s achievement in pursuing his legacy — has been to see physical partition and unilateral withdrawal by the settlers as two sides of the same coin. Israel requires the security — psychological as much as practical — of the wall. But Mr Sharon’s colossally courageous withdrawal of settlers from Gaza last August and the promise of further unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank (affecting 70,000 people) have transformed Israeli politics.