Window on Israel: No quick visits or neat solutions

The three regimes important to this little place are deep in uncertainty. Israel and the United States are facing elections and political change. More than ever, it is difficult to know if we should define Palestine as tragedy or farce. Its nominal president may or may not continue in office, with or without an election at the end of his term in January, with or without popular legitimacy in Gaza or the West Bank.
 
Tzipi Livni, Israel's prime minister designate, has decided that she cannot, or will not form a government, and has advised the calling of a national elections. Excluding the possibility of an indictment, Ehud Olmert will remain as a care-taker, virtually powerless prime minister until the voting sometime in January or February, plus another month or so while the new prime minister designate tries to create a coalition.
 
Guesses at this point are most tentative. Livni is defining herself as clean and responsible: not giving in to the financial demands of the ultra-Orthodox parties, or their insistence that she not negotiate the future of Jerusalem. In a population tired of corruption in high places, and always unsympathetic to the ultra-Orthodox, those images may be weighty enough against Binyamin Netanyahu. Reports are that he urged the ultra-Orthodox parties to stay out of a coalition with Livni so that he could offer them twice as much when he becomes the prime minister designate. He has also been beating the drum about not negotiating the future of Jerusalem. He is a great speaker, but a record of claiming more than he delivers will be the hallmark of all who campaign against him.
 
Commentators are counting out the Labor Party, bothered even more than usual with internal problems, and polled to get only 12 seats in the 120 seat Knesset.
 
The Pensioners' Party may disappear entirely, troubled by internal disputes, charges of financial and sexual misbehavior. It should have accepted what Livni was offering, but that might not have been enough to save her from the ultra-Orthodox.
 
The future of Jerusalem is prominent among the problems that kept Livni from forming a government.
 
Dividing Jerusalem is either an obvious part of a Israel-Palestine solution, or a insoluble nut that will continue to challenge well-intentioned negotiators.
 
The attractive idea is to slice off Arab neighborhoods for the benefit of Palestine. So far no one is talking about a referendum. Maybe the residents do not want to become Palestinians. It is not clear if they would lose Israeli medical insurance, other social benefits, and access to jobs in Israel. Moreover, religious and nationalist Jews, with financial support from overseas enthusiasts, have been planting themselves in Arab neighborhoods.
 
The Temple Mount/Noble Sanctuary has proven difficult enough to scuttle any deal. Who would get what with respect to its several archaeological layers, and competing demands for control, construction, visitation, and prayer? A prevailing Muslim view is that the Jews never were there, and have no rights. Few Jews visit the place, but many are intense in opposing full rights to the Muslims.
 
Netanyahu makes a shrill case about the importance of a united Jerusalem for Israel's security. He has no convincing solution about the quarter million or so Arabs living in what he calls Jewish Jerusalem, or the fully Arab cities that are within easy range of Jerusalem's northern, southern, and eastern borders.
 
Frustrated Israelis and overseas friends have no end of ideas to solve the problems, or how to adjust the political process so that a respectable party wins a national election and can govern efficiently. None know how to unite a population divided on several dimensions of religion and ideology, or how to satisfy Palestinians even more affected by extremism.
 
Whatever happens, it is not likely to satisfy George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice. Israel's political calendar will not enable elections before the end of the Bush presidency. Early in their campaigns, both Barack Obama and John McCain promised even more assiduous efforts to solve the problems of the Middle East. Since then, the American and the world economies have pushed themselves to the fore. Optimists see indications of American progress in Iraq, but not in Afghanistan. There may no quick visits or neat solutions for Israel and Palestine.
 
This is the season that religious Jews pray for rain, along with their daily prayers for peace and prosperity. The prospects are best for rain.