Israeli Politics

It's about time I actually took responsibility for the fact that I have a brain and start reading about the political situation in Israel. Mostly because I expect I should have an opinion on it that is my own. I'm not going to check, but I bet Mader has one, and I bet it's one I'd agree with. But that's besides the point. Some if not all of my links require free sign-ins to NYTimes and Haaretz. The Haaretz one(s) are worth it.

First off, a 77 year old man who had a stroke in December had complications now. This makes sense, Sharon had an extremely stressful job. It's just unfortunate, because he'd just decided that after 30 years (or more) of being a founding Likud man, he needed to split off and form the Kadima party.
Up until this move, Israeli politics really had been divided along Likud (right) and Labor (left) lines, with many smaller parties on the left, right, center, religious, and bizarre along for the ride. So shortly after Sharon forms Kadima, rallies his troops, and actually forms a centrist (mostly right-of-center) party with hopes of pulling a majority in the parliamentary elections in March - he's debilitated. Some people have hope that Kadima will not fall apart without Sharon, but losing Sharon has seriously eroded the credibility of the infant party, since it was his vision he expected to move forward into - and no one else can recreate that vision. (I can explain a bit about Parliamentary Electoral procedure - if anyone is interested)

Sharon has left in his place a man named Ehud Olmert - who was Mayor of Jerusalem for 10 years before moving to the cabinet to be Finance Minister. Unlike Sharon, Netanyahu, Peres and others - Olmert has no real political papertrail. He's made no major decisions besides running Jerusalem for 10 years. That is a feat unto itself, but no specific trials of his character stand out, so he really is a completely unknown entity. The confidence and security that Israelis were trying to settle into is gone now.

Not only is there no real guarantee of security anymore (well, there might not have ever been one, really) but Palestinian Elections are at the end of this month, and as of now, Hamas is still running. And they're still labeled a terrorist organization, even though I know that terrorism is a minority of their actions in the PA.
The plight of the average palestinian person pains me. They have been consistently sold out, abused and shortchanged for the past 60 years for sure, and in some instances even longer than that. What started with arab absentee-landlords selling the land out from under palestinian farmers to Jews who wanted to move to the biblical land of Israel (1880s-1920s) has culminated through various stages into a disaster. The areas with highest employment in the Palestinian Authority still have 20% unemployment. At worst, the unemployment rate for kids 16-25 is a whopping 70%. As if that status-quo weren't bad enough, the PA is going bankrupt, which will send a bunch more pissed off, hungry people out into the streets and cause trickle-downs to independent shopkeepers all across the PA.
I wish that the average run of the mill palestinian would get with his neighbors and say - "Hey, if you stop selling us out, we could have our own utilities, municipal governments, jobs and HOPE - you know - for a GOOD LIFE. And while we're at it, shoes for the kids and meals on the table." But unfortunately, the leaders of the PA were too happy grafting off the top of all the international aid in order to actually help their OWN PEOPLE. And Jehane Arafat spent U$100,000 a MONTH in Paris the year before Arafat died. Not only that, she had the GALL to stand up Evita-like and cry that she was to be the new voice of the people after her husband died. You want to help the people? GIVE THE MONEY BACK. Apparently I'm still angry about this.

Where does it go from here? Wait and see. Palestinian elections are going to happen, and the people who live in the eastern half of Jerusalem will be able to vote in Jerusalem (it looks like it anyway) and depending on who is elected to what posts in which parts of the PA, then the interim Israeli government and the US will weigh in. Then it's another waiting game until March (a bit like college admissions) when Israeli elections happen and a new government is formed. God, please let it just be stable for the next few months. Please.