Israel elections in the Guardian

Audio:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/audio/2008/oct/27/israel-coalition-talks-fail

Early Election looms for Israel as Livini fails to broker coalition.

• Kadima leader blames religious right's demands
• Decision leaves nation in a political limbo

Israel looked set last night for an early general election after the prime minister designate, Tzipi Livni, failed to broker a deal with the religious right and form a new coalition government .
Livni, who replaced Ehud Olmert as leader of the dominant centrist Kadima party last month, visited Israel's president, Shimon Peres, and urged him to call a new poll.
"I'm sick of this extortion. We'll see all these heroes in 90 days," Livni is quoted as telling her advisers after refusing to yield to the demands of the religious right.
A new election and the prospect of a victory for the rightwing Likud party could completely derail peace talks with the Palestinians as well as wider Middle East negotiations.

Ian Black: 'It means months of uncertainty on a peace deal'Link to this audio
Livni called on Peres after a rollercoaster day of last-ditch attempts to salvage the negotiations. "When it became clear that everyone and every party was exploiting the opportunity to make demands that were economically and diplomatically illegitimate, I decided to call off [talks] and go to elections," she said.
Peres has up to three days to decide how to resolve the leadership crisis, which began on Israel's 60th birthday earlier this year when it was revealed that police were investigating Olmert for fraud.
The president is expected to yield to Livni's call and schedule an election to be held in 90 days, instead of November 2010, and even then it could take several more weeks for the new prime minister elect to form a viable coalition government.
Alternatively, Peres can appoint another parliamentary leader who he believes could form a stable government within four weeks, but this is unlikely as Livni, the leader of the party with the biggest parliamentary majority, was the most likely to succeed.
Livni's failure to broker a deal with the religious right, in particular Shas, which was demanding massive increases to child allowances and a guarantee that the government would not give up east Jerusalem, conquered by Israel in 1967, has left the nation in a political limbo.
As a leader tainted by corruption, Olmert's mandate to act on behalf of the nation has been greatly diminished, yet he could remain at the helm for at least three more months - and possibly five - until a new coalition government can be formed.
As a result, Olmert told the cabinet yesterday that when the winter session of parliament opens today, he will not outline a political agenda for the future as expected. "In the current circumstances, this would be incorrect. Therefore, I will make short remarks on socioeconomic issues and not those which certainly stand at the base of serious disagreements among the Israeli public," he said.
The US-backed peace talks with the Palestinians and the back-channel talks with Syria, via Turkey, are two such divisive national issues that are expected to grind to a halt.
But while Olmert is powerless to act on such issues - especially after the parliament passed a law earlier this year requiring a referendum or a two-thirds parliamentary majority for Israel to sign a peace deal involving territorial concessions - he faces growing political unrest and threats of violence from Jewish ultra-nationalists, Palestinian in-fighting in the West Bank and an increasingly independent, self-funding Hamas regime in Gaza.
Jewish ultra-nationalists again clashed with Israeli soldiers and police on the weekend after the government ordered the demolition of an illegal outpost. Settlers from Kiryat Arba, a settlement near the Palestinian city of Hebron also rampaged through a Palestinian village, smashing windows and vandalising graves.

Failure to form coalition may let in Likud

Old hands talk of a Middle Eastern version of Murphy's law: what can go wrong, does - and usually at the worst possible moment. Tzipi Livni's failure to form a new coalition led by her Kadima party shows it is at work again.
Confirmation of early elections in Israel follows several developments that had generated cautious optimism: one is the likelihood that Barack Obama will be the next US president and will make good on his pledge to prioritise talks to resolve the world's most intractable conflict.
Another is renewed interest in the 2002 Arab peace initiative that offers Israel normal relations with all Arab states if - and that remains a very big "if" - it can reach a just settlement with the Palestinians.
The third positive element has been the repeated readiness of Syria to pursue negotiations with Israel over the Golan Heights - one of the reasons its foreign minister, Walid al-Muallem, is meeting his British counterpart, David Miliband, in London today.
The reason Livni's failure casts such a dark cloud is that polls consistently show the frontrunner in the election is Binyamin "Bibi" Netanyahu, leader of the right-wing Likud opposition.
Netanyahu, who like Livni would have to form a coalition with other parties, does not believe in the sort of peace with the Palestinians that Kadima and its Labour party ally are prepared, in principle at least, to agree to.
The Likud will resist any re-partition of Jerusalem, a key issue for Palestinians. Netanyahu opposed the 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and calls for economic development for the Palestinian Authority before negotiations over territory. Ideologically, the Likud is close to the thousands of Israeli settlers who would have to be evacuated if a land-for-peace deal with the Palestinians could be cobbled together.
Netanyahu's approach, with his emphasis on fighting "terror", contrasts with the swelling chorus of mainstream Arab and Israeli voices warning that time for a two-state solution is running out. Indeed, many believe it has already gone.
But Israel's tangled internal politics are not the only problem. The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, is also in a desperately weak position.
Hamas warns it will cease recognition of Abbas as president after next January, when his term is due to end. Abbas does not want new elections until 2010. Egypt is trying to broker a compromise between the factions, but hopes of success are slim.
A Palestinian spokesman says Israel's turbulent domestic politics are its internal affair, and insists the PA is committed to negotiations with whoever is in charge. But no one doubts that a focus on elections - whatever the outcome - is bad news for an already near-moribund peace process.
As the Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said from Gaza City yesterday: "The call for early elections and Livni's failure to form a coalition government is a slap in the face to those who still dream of negotiations."