The Israeli elections occur on Tuesday. This is an event I will be watching closely.
Regardless of which party is elected, the next Israeli government faces myriad international challenges. Ariel Sharon was fortunate to be elected under President Bush, but his untimely successor Ehud Olmert wasted the unprecedented privileges Bush bestowed upon him.
Since the 2006 war, the Israeli population has been desperate for an alternative. Now is their chance to elect a new party, but the polls show that the Israeli people are as divided and disillusioned as ever. What is worrying is that many Israelis claim they do not even want to vote.
As usual, new and unique parties are running in the elections. We will see if these parties reach success to as significant a level as in the previous 2006 elections. At the moment, the Israeli press is concerned with the potential success of Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu party, which horribly upsets the Ashkenaz elite, but provides a "pragmatic" alternative to some "settlers" and Eastern European immigrants. The party was surprisingly successful in the previous 2006 elections.
Pragmatic?
Let's share just what the Yisrael Beitenu program is: A small Palestinian Bantustan, not including any of the current settlements, which would then be augmented by ceding the adjacent lands populated by Israeli Arab citizens, whose citizenship would then be transferred to Palestine.
I am sure this does distress the old-line Ashkenaz elite, although (as I am sure you know), the vanguard of the settlement movement is itself overwhelmingly Ashkenazi. And I am sure it distresses the Europeans. I would suggest, however, that this distress is a natural and correct reaction.
The Israeli electorate seems tempted to try either Lieberman or a return run of Bibi Netanyahu, a man whose word is no good in any capital he has ever visited. I don't see much good on the horizon; Obama is not that much of a miracle worker.
The USA should be laughing at the Israeli failure to modify their silly Proportionate Representation system.
In Slovakia, and many other PR systems, there is some threshold (5% in SK) of popular national support before a party gets representation in the Parliament.
This is an excellent balance of allowing new, genuinely popular parties to emerge, but requiring long term fringe groups to become merely a faction of some other larger party, before they even a seat.
I now like US district representatives better than PR party systems, but the threshold is needed to avoid Israelis too-many mini party problem.
I believe the threshold in Israel is 2 percent.
Having said that, the five largest parties all polled over 10 percent. The Israeli polity is extremely fragmented politically and I don't think there's a magic bullet, even geographical districts, that will change that.