Over to Kadima

When Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced two months ago that he was leaving the right-wing Likud Party, which he had embodied for three decades, one thing seemed certain: his new centrist party, Kadima, would be far more about one man — himself — than any one idea… Mr. Sharon struck such a powerful chord with the Israelis’ craving for security and stability that he might well have been able to bulldoze his people into the future as he saw it. But Mr. Sharon’s massive second stroke means that both Kadima and what passes for the Israeli political center must now find a political vision that revolves around more than just Ariel Sharon…

Mr. Sharon’s old Likud Party, now headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, represents the same old Likud way: inflaming Palestinian tensions through war and continuing settlements on Palestinian land in the West Bank. The Labor Party, with its new leader, Amir Peretz, represents the Labor way: negotiations with the Palestinians… But what, then, is the third way that Kadima could theoretically represent? The vision pushed forward by Mr. Sharon for the past year has been built around the central tenet of separation: the idea that the Israelis can’t live with the Palestinians, so they will separate from the Palestinians and build a wall to make the separation visible and permanent.

Excerpted from an editorial in the ‘New York Times’, January 6