The polls were wrong, as usual. Instead of winning by a huge margin, as predicted until the very last moment by all the polls, Tzipi Livni just squeaked through. She defeated Shaul Mofaz by just 431 votes. But a majority is a majority. Livni was duly installed as Kadima chairperson.
What does that say about the Israeli public?
First of all, this is the victory of a person without a military background over someone with almost nothing apart from a military background.
On the advice of his right-wing American political strategist, Stanley Greenberg, Mofaz emphasised the word "security" on every occasion, almost in every sentence. A popular talk-show turned this into a parody:
Security, security, security, security. Well, it did not work. The defence minister was beaten by a mere woman devoid of any military experience (even if she did serve for 15 years in the Mossad).
That does not mean that Livni may not turn out to be a warmonger, like Elisabeth I, Catherine the Great, Margaret Thatcher and Indira Gandhi. But fact is fact: the Kadima voters have preferred a non-general to a general.
Moreover, Kadima is a party of the centre. Its members are not fervent about anything, neither on the right or the left, they have no strong convictions of any kind. So their decision can be regarded as a reflection of the general mood.
Livni presented herself as the personification of the peace effort, the woman who conducts the negotiations with the Palestinians, who prefers diplomacy to war, who points the way to the end of the conflict.
All this may be sleight of hand, pure deceit. Perhaps there is no difference at all between the two. But even if this is so, that is not the most important aspect.
The important fact is that the Kadima voters, the most representative group in the country, accorded victory - well, a tiny victory - to the candidate who at least pretended to favour peace.
In his The Second Coming, the Irish poet W. B. Yeats describes utter chaos: "Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold". The metaphor is taken from military history: in bygone days, armies drew up for battle with the main force in the centre. As long as the centre held, everything was fine.
Centre
In Israel today, the centre is holding. The centrist party voted for the woman of the centre. It can also be described otherwise: in Israel, 2008, the forces are divided equally between the "Right" and the "Left", and the "Left" won this time by the smallest possible margin.
I remember the elections nine years ago. In May 1999, Ehud Barak won a decisive victory over the incumbent, Benjamin Netanyahu. The response was overwhelming.
The general feeling in the peace camp was of a release from servitude to freedom, from an era of failure and corruption into an era of peace and well-being.
Without any proclamations, masses of people streamed into Tel-Aviv's Rabin Square, the place where a prime minister had been assassinated fours years earlier. I was among them. In the square, the atmosphere was intoxicating. Delirious people danced, embraced each other, kissed.
Barak promised to be a second Rabin, only more so. He promised to make peace with the Palestinians within months.
A rosy future was warming the horizon, "the dawn of a new day". A year and a half later, nothing of all this remained. Barak, the hero of peace, brought on us the greatest disaster in the annals of the struggle for peace.
He came back from the Camp David conference, which had taken place on his express demand, with a declaration that was to become a mantra: "I have turned every stone on the way to peace / I have offered the Palestinians unprecedented generous terms / Arafat has rejected everything / We have no partner for peace."
With 20 Hebrew words Barak destroyed the peace camp and brought about a public mood which even Netanyahu could not create: that there is no chance for peace, that we are condemned to live with an everlasting conflict.
Therefore, no one got excited about Livni's victory. The general reaction was a sigh of relief and a shrug of the shoulder. So Kadima has voted. So it has a new chairperson. So there will be a new prime minister. Let's wait and see.
So what to expect, after all? Reacting to the election results, Gideon Levy wrote that the heart wants to hope, but the brain cannot. That is an understandable reaction.
Since Tzipi, short for Tzipora, means bird, one wants to cry out: Fly, Tzipora, fly! Fly to heaven! After your election as prime minister, lose no time!
Set up a government coalition with the peace forces, use the first few months of your term to achieve peace with the Palestinians, call new elections and submit yourself and the peace agreement to the public test! As Livni herself phrased it in her direct way: "There is no time for bullshitting!"
That is what Barak should have done in 2000. He did not take the chance, and therefore he lost. Will Tzipora the bird reach these heights? The heart hopes. The brain has its doubts.
Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is a contributor to CounterPunch's book 'The Politics of Anti-Semitism'.
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