Israel: looking for the silver lining.

One has to be concerned about peace prospects under Israel’s proposed Binyamin Netanyahu government. It does include the moderate Ehud Barak, still head of a deeply-divided and less-powerful-than-ever Labor Party, as Defense Minister. But the racist Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the rightwing Israel Beiteinu (Israel is Our Home) Party, will show Palestinians and other Arabs an unfriendly face as Foreign Minister. Moderates had hoped to avoid having Lieberman part of the power structure, even though his party finished third. But Lieberman had to be part of Netanyahu’s government once Kadima's Tzipi Livni, whose party actually holds one more seat than Netanyahu’s Likud, choose to go into opposition rather than become Likud’s junior partner.

Pierre Atlas, an American academic, has written that “The best-case scenario--for Israel and for the prospects of resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict--would have been a grand coalition of the Israeli mainstream: Likud, Kadima, and Labor.” This is the coalition many, including myself, had been hoping against hope for. Not to be.

Yet Arab American Institute chief James Zogby, a person with an obvious interest in Middle East peace, points out that hardliner Netanyahu and the hardline Palestinians of Hamas will probably have to be part of any peace agreement that works. So why not have negotiations that include those most resistant to peace? It did work in Northern Ireland, finally.