The Quandary of the Israeli Right

You get the feeling that we have been here before. Elections are drawing near. There is some optimism in the air.

The left-center government whose policies we despise seems to be coming to the end of its tenure. Another corrupt leader who once had the support of the majority of the Israeli public is now showing his true colors. The public is fed-up with his criminal activities, as well as his desperate attempts to bargain the country's land and security in the hope of saving his soul. Polls are showing that elections are likely to lead to a coalition government of the Likud and the religious parties.

So why aren't the settlers, the religious Zionists and the right-wing activists jumping for joy? It is because we get the feeling that history is repeating itself.
We went through this in 1996, and then again in 2001. The collapse of a left-wing government was met with unbridled enthusiasm as if the Messiah himself had arrived. After all, we had suffered through the disastrous land-for-peace' policies first of the Yitzchak Rabin-Shimon Peres government, and later by Ehud Barak. And we had great security-minded leaders first Binyamin Netanyahu, then Ariel Sharon coming to power.

So there was euphoria in the air. We were finally going to set things straight. We were going to return the country to its Zionist path. We had a relentless leader who was passionate about the Land of Israel and completely committed to the security of its Jewish residents. There would be no more negotiations with terrorists. We would stop living in the fantasy world of Oslo believing that land concessions would lead to a change of heart among the Arabs who wish to destroy us. We would finally confront the realities of the Middle East.

But, as we know, in both cases the initial excitement over the right wing's rise to power very quickly led to bitter disappointment. Netanyahu and Sharon both rode the enthusiasm of the settlers and right-wing activists to power, only to slap them in the face once they obtained the desired seat. They both campaigned before the elections as security-hawks who would put an end to the suicidal peace-policies of their predecessors. And each of them took a sharp turn towards the left once they were comfortably seated in the Prime Minister's office.

We have all heard the saying power corrupts', but in Israel it seems that power makes you a dovish nave left-winger. Netanyahu's famous

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