Bertie Ahern to be expelled from Fianna Fail?

There were two stories of interest today in Irish Central's Newshound site dedicated to Northern Ireland politics. One is that an official Irish commission, the Mahon Commission, has found that former Taoiseach (Prime Minister pronounced teeshuck) Bertie Ahern, was less than honest about the source of his wealth. The other is that his party that he led to victory three times (1997, 2002, 2007) as the most successful party leader since Eamon de Valera, the party's founder, is seeking to expel him for corruption. Ahern collaborated with British Prime Minister Tony Blair in bringing peace to Northern Ireland from 1998 to 2007. Stephen Collins, the Irish Times political reporter and the author of a very good book on Fianna Fail from the 1970s to 2000 as well as a biography of former Taoiseach Charles Haughey, writes that expelling Ahern will be the easy part for the party. It will be much harder for the party to recover its reputation that it lost as a result of the economic collapse in 2010. A disclosure, two years ago I was researching Fianna Fail for a project to compare it with Israel's Likud Party. I turned to Collins to advise me on bibliography.

For observers of Irish politics what happens to Fianna Fail is of great interest. It should, however, also be of interest to those interested in the future of the Middle East peace process. Here is why.

Fianna Fail was the dominant part in Irish politics during the post-partition period from its founding in 1926. It twice went sixteen years in office without interruption and when the opposition came to power, it was usually to give FF a break of only three or four years. This dominance was based upon three things: a flexible economic policy, a policy of posturing in foreign policy, and a reputation for piety. The party appealed to the rural peasantry and workers by its support for the Irish language, calls for a united Ireland and attacks on Britain, and its economic populism. Like many a post-colonial revolutionary regime in the Third World it also helped to keep its electorate poor through its autarkic economic policies. 

In a new constitution written by Taoiseach Eamon de Valera and adopted in 1937 Ireland establishes a constitutional claim to the territory of Northern Ireland. It only ended that claim by altering the two relevant articles, 2 and 3, in 1999 as part of the Northern Ireland peace process. So for 62 years Ireland had an official policy of irredentism or pining after lost territory. 

Fatah, the dominant party in Palestinian politics from its founding in 1958 until 2006, had a similar irredentist policy towards Israel until the 1990s and the Oslo process. Many of its officials still make irredentist statements. And Fatah has been infamous for its corruption in the Palestinian Authority from 1994 onwards. Thus the Northern Ireland peace process of the 1990s has lessons to teach us today about ending irredentism in Palestine.

2012 Predictions for the Middle East and Irish Politics

After years of amusing myself by watching the pundits having their ignorance played back to them on Nightline and in rival press columns, I am publicly putting my predictions forward. As my crystal ball has been in the shop for decades I claim no special insight into the future. My predictions are based only on the future being like the recent past and present.

One, Netanyahu will call elections this year and will emerge as prime minister again. Whether he calls them before attacking Iran in order to gain a popular mandate for such an action or after is anyone's guess. I'm guessing that being cautious he will be reelected then move to attack Iran.

Two, continued Islamist victories in Arab Spring elections in Egypt and elsewhere will make Israel more cautious than ever (except towards Iran) and make Hamas and Hezbollah provocative.

Three, Egypt will attempt to unilaterally alter the peace treaty with Israel by ending diplomatic relations.

Four, if Obama's reelection looks very uncertain he may attempt to strike against Iran or implement more stringent sanctions in order to win more support and ensure Israel's safety.

Five, Romney will pander to Jewish voters over Israel but most will vote for Obama. Romney's pandering, however, will help him with Evangelical Protestant conservative Republicans.

Six, with no major elections scheduled for Northern Ireland, the Sinn Fein--DUP relationship will continue smoothly. The UUP, TUV, and SDLP will continue to decline in importance. The new leadership of the SDLP will make little difference to the party's fortunes. There will be an uneasy relationship between the mainland Conservatives and the UUP.

Seven, Gerry Adams will attempt to become more of a figure in Southern Irish politics leaving Martin McGuinness to run the North. Fine Gael will recover its position as the preeminent party in Irish politics following the collapse of Fianna Fail in 2010. Fianna Fail, Sinn Fein and Labour will all compete for second place in Irish party politics. This may take several years to resolve. I'm betting that ultimately Fianna Fail will emerge in second place behind Fine Gael and ahead of both Labour and Sinn Fein. Labour should also remain ahead of Sinn Fein. 

Eight, if there is no further crash among the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain) in Europe and the Euro remains at its present level then Obama will likely be reelected over the Republican nominee, who will most likely be Romney. If there is a crash causing a major devaluation of the Euro then that will travel across the Atlantic leading to a return to recession or even depression. In that case the GOP nominee will win the election even if it is Ron Paul (who won't be the nominee). 

Nine, if there is a Euro crash this will either lead to a major shrinking of the Euro zone to leave out southern Europe and Ireland or the creation of a central bank with powers to devalue the currency, raise interest rates etc. --in other words the creation of a real monetary and economic zone. Short of that the European project will eventually stall and collapse.

Alasdair McDonnell New SDLP leader

On Sunday Alasdair McDonnell, the member of parliament for the Social Democratic and Labour Party from South Belfast, was elected the new leader of the party beating out three other candidates including Deputy Leader Patsy McGlone and Environmental Minister Alex Attwood. His tenure got off to a rough start when he decided to give an acceptance speech from a lecturn without notes using a teleprompter (autocue in UK speak) that was badly positioned so that he was blinded by the glare of the lights and couldn't read his speech. Some commentators took this as a bad omen.
 

McDonnell vowed to make the party competitive with Sinn Fein for the first time in years. Because of his impressive vote-winning performances in South Belfast he was chosen leader over his rivals. But the party has a basic problem with policy and strategy. It wants to attract Protestant members, but most members favor keeping the support for a united Ireland as part of its platform. If it does keep this it will find very few Protestants willing to join a Catholic party. And if it abandons this goal, it may lose many supporters to rival Sinn Fein without attracting many Protestants as compensation. Sinn Fein has stolen the SDLP's policies--plagiarized them without citation--and is better organized and sexier. The Shinners can persuade many young voters that it was the IRA's terrorist campaign that won all the concessions in equal status and power sharing that nationalists now enjoy in Northern Ireland. For the SDLP to convince them that the "armed struggle" delayed the delivery of these prizes rather than delivered them is a hard sell to people who did not live through The Troubles.

Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness may have also stirred up trouble for the SDLP as well as for his own party by going South to contest the Irish presidential election and then delivering the prize to Labour Party candidate Michael D. Higgins from unofficial Fianna Fail candidate Sean Gallagher. This might lead FF to enter Northern Ireland and start organizing branches in nationalist areas. This would strip voters from the SDLP in elections as more nationalist non-Sinn Fein voters choose to vote for an all-Ireland party rather than one that is merely committed to a united Ireland. Here is an exploration of that argument.

The SDLP has a choice between temporarily surrendering ministries to the rival Sinn Fein parties by going into opposition, possibly in conjunction with the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) and Party, or permanently playing second fiddle to Sinn Fein. Here is the argument for the latter course. The fact that the SDLP was unable to cooperate with the UUP when both were the leading parties under the Good Friday Agreement from 1998 to 2001 bodes ill for future cooperation in opposition. Most SDLP voters gave their lower preference votes to the rival Republicans rather than to their unionist allies in the UUP. Likewise UUP voters gave their lower preference votes to the DUP rather than to the SDLP. Sectarianism still runs strong in Northern Ireland.

Meanwhile, the Conservative Party has called on the UUP to dissolve itself and form a new party with the Tories. This was probably a deliberate way of forcing the UUP to cut its links to the Conservatives before the 2014 election. This will possibly make the UUP more receptive to a joint opposition strategy with the SDLP and Alliance.

Irish Presidential Election Analysis

Last Thursday, October 27, Ireland held a presidential election and the results were officially published on Saturday. According to the Irish Times the results were a follows for the three leading candidates: Michael D. Higgins (Irish Labour Party) 39.6%, Sean Gallagher (Independent but unofficial Fianna Fail candidate) 28.5%, and Martin McGuinness (Sinn Fein) 13.7%. The remaining four candidates together received 18.2% with none of them reaching seven percent. 

Martin McGuinness proved to be the kingmaker by accusing Gallagher on Monday night during a candidates' forum of taking a Fianna Fail contribution from a rich donor at an event a few years before. The accusation caught Gallagher off guard and he seemed to obfuscate in front of the cameras. He immediately went from being the frontrunner at 40 percent in the polls to the leading challenger. But by doing so McGuinness probably embittered a core Fianna Fail electorate, which will not forgive him nor Sinn Fein in the future. Sinn Fein slightly improved its standing over last year's general election, but received much less than the 14-18 percent that Mary Lou McDonald was predicting in the final week or the 20 percent that McGuinness polled at the start of the race. In comparison, Fianna Fail's unofficial candidate attracted a significant improvement in those constituencies that both FF and Sinn Fein contested last year.


The electorate seemed to demonstrate that it considered McGuinness to be more a paramilitary (Irish speak for terrorist) than a peacemaker and to be a foreigner as well. This confirmed trends demonstrated by other Northerners who have attempted political careers in the South, usually with Fine Gael. Northerners can be elected and have a career, but they won't be party leaders or presidents--except in Sinn Fein, which is predominantly a Northern party.

Fine Gael's Gaye Mitchell turned in an embarrassing performance for the party, but he was probably a poor choice. There was a reputation of less than honesty about him, which is reminiscent of Brian Lenihan Sr., the Fianna Fail candidate against Mary Robinson in 1990. The result did not hurt FF in subsequent general elections and the same will probably be true for Fine Gael, which is now Ireland's leading party after more than three-quarters of a century as the second largest party.

The result is also unlikely to affect McGuinness's stature in Northern Ireland where he returns to his role as Deputy First Minister after three weeks leave. In the North most unionists regard him as both former terrorist and peacemaker. McGuinness was reportedly reluctant to make the challenge for the presidency, but gave in to his party's draft.

For an analysis of the results of the election by the Irish Times see this article.  Or to avoid the archive charges go to the Ireland section of the website and look for the article entitled "Return of core Fianna Fail vote."

The Irish Presidential Race

On Thursday October 27 voters in Ireland--the Republic of Ireland--go to the polls to elect a new president. The presidency in Ireland is largely a ceremonial office devoid of any powers except for deciding on which party to turn to in order to form a government following an election. The presidency was created by the 1937 constitution written by Eamon de Valera. Until 1990 it was largely the property of Fianna Fail to hand out to worthy cultural figures and former senior party politicians. In 1990 Mary Robinson, a human rights lawyer running as an independent with the backing of both the Irish Labour Party and the Workers' Party, took the presidency away from Fianna Fail. Fianna Fail won it back in 1997 but ran Mary McAleese, a Northern nationalist and law professor at Queen's University of Belfast. She is now retiring.

In this election the main candidates have been four: Michael D. Higgins, a poet backed by the Labour Party; Sean Gallagher, a reality show star and former Fianna Fail member running as an independent; Martin McGuinness, the Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland and number two in Sinn Fein; and David Norris, a former senator and gay rights activist. Norris has been badly damaged by the revelation that he wrote a letter on behalf of a former lover, an Israeli wanted for statutory rape of a Palestinian. He hasn't recovered. Martin McGuinness was off to a strong start but has faltered as victims of the IRA have stalked him and the Irish Independent and the Irish Times newspapers as well as TV questioners have openly challenged his version of his past. A poll from the Irish Times has Gallagher at 40%, Higgins at 25%, and McGuinness at 15%, with the other four candidates making up the remaining 20 percent.

It is doubtful is McGuinness either expected to win when he became a candidate or even wants to win. After all, I think that McGuinness probably relishes the challenge of replacing Peter Robinson as First Minister if Sinn Fein can replace the DUP as the largest party in the North. The candidacy was really about raising Sinn Fein's profile in the Republic and outperforming Fianna Fail.

Sinn Fein has two natural constituencies in the Republic. First, are traditional republicans who were always Fianna Fail supporters and now feel abandoned after Fianna Fail ditched most of its traditional rhetoric about Irish unity as well as Ireland's constitutional claim to the Six Counties of the North during the peace process in the 1990s. They may have stayed with FF during the 2000s, but when the party suddenly imploded as a result of the Irish economic collapse last year they felt free to find a new home. They are particularly prevalent in rural areas and in the border counties along the border with Northern Ireland. The second group are the urban poor who felt left out by the Irish economic boom of the 1990s. They have traditionally voted for the Workers' Party starting in the mid-1980s then most transferred to the Democratic Left when that party split off from the Workers' Party in 1992 and then began to vote for Sinn Fein once the Democratic Left merged with the Labour Party in 1998. Sinn Fein was still under ten seats in the Dail until the 2010 election. Now the question is whether McGuinness has raised the profile of Sinn Fein enough to allow it to surpass Fianna Fail in the next general election.

In American terms Fianna Fail is comparable to the Republicans, Fine Gael (now the party in power) to the right wing of the Democrats and the Labour Party to the left wing of the Democrats. The Labour Party has flirted with Marxism in the past before settling on social democracy of the Western European variety while Fine Gael flirted with social democracy in the 1970s and 1980s before returning to free market principles in the 1990s. Fianna Fail in the past had hegemonic status within the Irish party system based on a unique blend of nationalist rhetoric, free market rhetoric, and cronyism. It remains to be seen whether Sinn Fein can do a comparable job of mixing socialist and nationalist rhetoric (that some have claimed is reminiscent of the parties of the Radical Right in Europe during the 1930s).

The presidential race in Ireland heats up

The presidential race with only about three weeks left, is getting tighter. And some are getting worried. Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness, the Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, is now in second place behind the Labour Party candidate.

Until 1992 the presidency was a retirement home for old successful politicians who had finished their careers. And because until last year Fianna Fail was the dominant party in Ireland, it was a rest home for Fianna Fail politicians. The first president, Douglas Hyde, was a literary figure, one of the few Protestant revivers of Irish. Then came Sean T. O'Kelly, who served for two terms from 1945 to 1959, he was the deputy prime minister or tanaiste under Eamon de Valera. Then in 1959 Eamon de Valera finally retired from the premiership after 27 years and was made president when he was nearly blind. He finally retired from the presidency in 1973 after two terms. Then came Erskine H. Childers, the son of an Anglo-Irish literary figure who ran guns for the Irish rebels before the Easter Rising of 1916. The son served as a deputy in the Irish Dail. After he died in office after only 17 months there was an all-party nomination of Cearbhall O Dalaigh, a Fianna Fail politician. But because by then a Fine Gael--Labour Party coalition was in one of its periodic spells in power, he had problems and ended up resigning after only two years. He was followed by another Fianna Fail politician, Patrick Hillery, who served two terms from 1976 to 1990.

In 1990 human rights lawyer Mary Robinson, a former Labour Party minister, broke the mold. She was nominated by both the Labour Party, the third largest party in Ireland, and by Sinn Fein--the Workers' Party, which was then still the political wing of the Official IRA, and some independents. Two years later most of the party in the Republic broke with the IRA to become the Democratic Left. Eventually they ended up merging with Labour. Robinson resigned just three months short of having completed her term to take up a position with the UN. She was followed by Mary McAleese, a law professor at Queen's University at Belfast, who had once beat future First Minister David Trimble out of a tenured faculty position. McAleese was nominated by both Fianna Fail and some independents. Prime Minister (Taoiseach) Bertie Ahern led former Prime Minister Albert Reynolds, who had pushed the peace process in Northern Ireland, that he was supporting him when he was really supporting McAleese. But because she wasn't a politician and was from Northern Ireland, McAleese seemed more like Robinson than like her other predecessors. President McAleese is now retiring after two terms. Click here for a list of Irish presidents.

Now Martin McGuinness is trying to break the mold again by combining the IRA background of De Valera and the Northern background--although he is from Derry and not Belfast--of McAleese. I expect that the Labour candidate will end up winning in the end, but McGuinness has added a lot of excitement to the race.

Martin McGuinness, candidate for Irish presidency

Last week Sinn Fein (SF), the all-Ireland party and political half of the Republican Movement, announced that Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness is its candidate for the Irish presidency.  SF's thinking is that with Fianna Fail not running, the party now has the opportunity to by-pass the once dominant Irish political party. McGuinness could conceivably come in as runner up in the election, thereby further mainstreaming SF within the Republic of Ireland. The election is to be held on October 27, 2011. McGuinness will have to take a leave of absence from his job as deputy first minister in Northern Ireland during the campaign. In Ireland the presidency is a largely ceremonial position.

During the peace process, SF's leadership spun a scenario to the Republican Movement's rank and file of a united Ireland coming about peacefully because the party would use its influence both within the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive and the Irish government in the Republic to bring this about. The projected date of unification was sometime in 2016, the centennial anniversary of the declaration of the Irish republic on the steps of the General Post Office in Dublin in 1916 at the start of the Easter Rising. Until recently this was a fantasy because SF was a marginal party within the Republic and shunned by the other parties as a coalition partner. Hypocritically Fianna Fail and Fine Gael would urge Northern unionists to share power with Sinn Fein while the IRA still had its guns, while excluding it from power in the South for the same reason. Then last year the collapse of the Irish economy and of Fianna Fail's dominant status within the Irish party system seemed to make this dream feasible. But ironically, the same collapse made a majority of Northern nationalists opposed to unity with the Republic in the forseeable future.

McGuinness's nomination is also another sign of the eclipse of Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams. It was speculated after the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 that Adams remained outside of the Executive because he was being groomed for the bigger prize of the Irish presidency. Throughout the peace process Adams was the most popular politician in the Republic in public opinion surveys because of his role. But three things changed. First, the robbery of the Northern Bank in Dublin on December 20, 2004 exposed Adams to the scrutiny of the Irish press and his credibility was tarnished. He claimed not to have known any details of the robbery while he had been negotiating with the Democratic Unionists and British government on a power-sharing deal. Second, Ed Moloney's Secrets From the Grave tied Adams to the disappearance of Jean McConville, a young Belfast mother of ten, in the early 1970s when Adams was reputed to be a senior figure in the Belfast Brigade of the IRA. Moloney interviewed a number of senior republican and loyalist figures for Boston College's Troubles project with the stipulation that the interviews would only be made public upon the death of the subjects. When this occurred with Brendan Hughes, Moloney published. Third, in 2010 it was revealed that Gerry Adams was lying about his patronage of his younger brother, Liam, a suspected child abuser, within SF. Adams had kept his knowledge of Liam's sexual problems to himself allowing Liam to find work with young people. The press then exposed these lies. 

Adams was elected a TD (deputy in Irish Dail) last year from the border county of Louth. So he is still a marketable commodity. But if McGuinness someday ends up as Irish president, it will be like the guy who saves himself for his one true love only to have his best friend wind up with his girl. 

McGuinness was a 20 or 21-year old butcher's apprentice in Derry when he joined the IRA in 1971. Ironically, he originally joined the Official IRA but left it for the Provisional IRA after a few months because he was not interested in politics but in action. By the time of the Bloody Sunday massacre in January 1972 he was second in command of the Derry IRA. The Official IRA went on a permanent ceasefire in May 1972--22 years before the Provisionals did. After 1976 he and Adams wrested control of Northern Command from more moderate figures and made it the dominant force in the IRA. In the latter half of the 1980s he was IRA chief of staff and remained in that position well into the 1990s guiding the organization through the peace process. He also became Gerry Adams's deputy within SF and its chief negotiator during the Good Friday and subsequent negotiations. He also became education minister during the period of the First Assembly from December 1999 to October 2002. In the spring of 2007 when the peace process was resurrected it was McGuinness who became the partner of the Rev. Ian Paisley, leader of the DUP--the infamous Dr. No of Ulster politics. The two were dubbed the "chuckle brothers" by the media for their public shows of affection. McGuinness has always been more open about his past IRA background than Adams who to this day denies every having been a member of the IRA.

The advantage of democracy--Ireland goes to the polls

As the population of Tripoli, Libya and other Libyan cities brave the bullets of regime mercenaries and risk being strafed by pilots who have not yet defected to Malta and elsewhere, the voters of Ireland go quietly to the polls. They are now taking the opportunity to throw out a government that was so feckless that it presided over a property boom that makes America's similar boom look restrained. The Anglo-Irish Bank has collapsed and other banks are in various stages of insolvency--being bailed out by a loan package from the European Union that has very stiff repayment conditions. It is estimated that the Irish debt now amounts to approximately $500,000 per capita. No wonder common skilled laborers could afford summer homes in Ireland or abroad before the debt was called in.

Since 1932, the third election it contested, Fianna Fail has been the largest party in Ireland. It has since that day always received at least 39 percent of the popular vote and until 1989 when it governed--which was most of the time--it governed alone, with either the support of independents as a minority government or as a majority government. Recent polls have Fine Gael at 40 percent giving it possibly enough deputies--TDs--to govern with support from independents.  If not, or possibly simply to gain more stability, Fine Gael will rule Ireland in a coalition government with Labour, its junior partner in coalition governments in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.

Both Fianna Fail and Fine Gael are Center-Right parties, closer to each other in ideology than to their competitor parties. They represent the two sides of the Irish Civil War of 1922-23, fought over the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921 that ended the Irish War of Independence. Ultimately, the war was fought over whether or not to take an oath of loyalty to the British sovereign before entering the Dail. Fine Gael is the successor to the party that won the war and ruled Ireland for its first decade of independence. Fianna Fail is the party of the man, Eamon de Valera, who vowed never to utter the oath and after losing the war did so three years later.  For the next sixty years elections were fought over the civil war and then during the 1980s and 1990s over economic issues and Northern Ireland.  Irish politics were until late last year much like American politics following the Civil War and up until the New Deal and possibly even the 1960s.

It looks like Fianna Fail's junior coalition partner during the 2000s, the Green Party, will be obliterated in this election. Sinn Fein, the former political wing of the Irish Republican Army, looks to at least double its representation in the Dail from five to ten. Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams, the man who claims to have never been in the IRA (but whose nephews and uncles ran the organization in Belfast for decades) quit his always-vacant seat in the British parliament from West Belfast and traveled south to Co. Louth to contest a seat in the Dail. That is where the body of Jean McConville, a Belfast woman murdered by the IRA for either informing for the British or comforting a dying British soldier, was discovered in 2003. A recently published book based on interviews with a former senior IRA operative in Belfast claims that Adams gave the order for McConville's murder. Her daughter has been trailing Adams on the campaign trail acting as a one-woman truth squad. Most politicians have figurative skeletons in the closet; Adams has real skeletons in figurative closets!

Social Democratic and Labour Party leader Margaret Ritchie recently traveled south and injected herself into southern politics to claim that Sinn Fein is acting like "green Communists in the South and red Tories in the North." In other words, they are hypocrites accepting severe cuts in Belfast as part of the ruling coalition but condemning Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and Labour for doing the same in Dublin. 

From the 1840s to the early 1990s the Irish working class has always use emigration as a primary means of earning a living. First it was to America, then to Britain and Australia. And finally to the European mainland after Ireland joined the EEC with Britain in 1972.  The migration flow reversed itself in the mid-1990s as the Celtic Tiger economic miracle took hold and business boomed. For a dozen years the Irish had it good! Now graduating university students will be once more departing to try their luck abroad.  Ireland's loss is the world's gain as well-educated English speakers flock to America, Britain, and the Continent once more.

How the new Irish government handles the new austerity program will be a weather vane for the PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain), which are on the verge (or over the edge and on the way to the bottom in Greece's case) of economic insolvency as well.  All of Europe will be watching Dublin closely for signals. Those interested in the fate of the European Union should as well.

Can Israel's Right make peace?

Three recent developments have put the future of the two-state solution paradigm in doubt. These are: 1) the recent unrest in Egypt and throughout the Arab world; the leaks in Al Jazeera of the negotiating positions in the 2008 Israeli-Palestinian negotiations; and 3) the split within the Israeli Labor Party.  The full ramifications of what is happening in Egypt will probably not be clear for several months. We can, however, look already at a worst case scenario there and look at what the effects of the other two developments are.

The two-state solution was historically envisaged as a deal between a Labor-led coalition in Israel and the Fatah party/PLO. The Rabin government of 1992-95 consisted of three parties: the Israel Labor Party, Meretz, and Shas. Arab parties were not included in the coalition but pledged to support with their votes in the Knesset any peace deal. In the February 2009 Israeli election Labor had 13 seats compared to 42 in 1992; Meretz had three seats compared to 12 in 1992 and Shas has stayed about the same with a normal range of eight to 13 seats. Shas, an ethnic-religious party of Middle Eastern Jews, incidentally, prefers joining right-wing coalitions.

Some have thought that Kadima, a splinter party from the Likud in late 2005, might replace Labor as Washington's Israeli peace partner. But the revelations of the 2008 Israeli-Palestinian negotiations that were recently leaked by an unknown source--probably within the PA--to Al Jazeera, disprove that conjecture. Israel was unwilling to make the major concessions necessary to match Palestinian concessions on borders and refugees. Kadima is nearly split evenly between centrist leader and former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and hawkish former Likud Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz. Although it has lasted longer than similar centrist experiments in the past (Dash, the Center Party), its long-term existence is by no means assured.

Recently former Labor leader Ehud Barak announced that he was leaving Labor with four other members of the Knesset to form a new party, Atzmaut (independence). This leaves Labor with eight seats. Assuming that Kadima keeps its present total of 28 seats in the next election--it lost one from 2006--and the eight Labor MKs are reelected along with the three Meretz MKs, the Center-Left will still be nearly 20 seats short of a majority in the Knesset. Thus, for the foreseeable future an Israeli peace coalition will rely on the votes of the Likud. Is there anything to the argument that "only Nixon could go to China" or "only De Gaulle could make peace in Algeria?"

Although Benyamin "Bibi" Netanyahu paid lip service in the summer of 2009 to a two-state solution, he comes from a very distinguished Revisionist family. His father, Benzion, is still alive at 100 and a major ideological influence on Bibi. Bibi is also the author of an ideological tract, A Durable Peace: Israel and Its Place Among the Nations, which argues that Israel needs to retain the West Bank for security purposes. His five years as prime minister (1996-99, 2009-11) indicate that his highest concern is maintaining the cohesion of his coalition while appeasing Washington.

There are four possible precedents for a Likud leader making peace with either Syria or the Palestinians. I argue that none of them applies to either the Syrian front of the West Bank. First, the first Likud government of Menahem Begin made peace with Egypt in 1979. If a new Egyptian regime either renounces the peace treaty or significantly downgrades it by permanently withdrawing its ambassador to Tel Aviv, this will disappear as a useful precedent. Also the Sinai was never sacred territory ideologically in Revisionism. And it was never annexed by Israel as the Likud annexed the Golan Heights in 1981.

Second, a conservative and nationalist National Party government made peace with the black majority in South Africa in the 1990s. But this was after trade sanctions had been in place by the U.S. Congress and European Union since 1986. President F.W. de Klerk feared that trade sanctions would be significantly strengthened over time and combine with internal guerrilla warfare and unrest to ruin South Africa's economy over decades if peace were not reached. Until the United States implements trade sanctions against Israel over its occupation of the West Bank this example will be discounted by Israeli leaders.

Third, Democratic Unionist Party leader the Rev. Ian Paisley made peace with Sinn Fein in 2007. But this was after the Good Friday Agreement had been in place for nine years and the rival Ulster Unionists had done all the risk taking. This would only be applicable if the Labor Party had actually signed a peace treaty with the Palestinians in the 1990s rather than merely a framework for peace. And Britain had threatened to enact significant economic penalties against Northern Ireland if the parties failed to reach peace. There was significant popular pressure for the DUP to modify its positions as a result. And a major disarmament move by the Irish Republican Army in September 2005, five years after it was supposed to have disarmed, made Paisley's task much easier.

Fourth, the dominant Fianna Fail party in the Republic of Ireland initiated the Northern Ireland peace process in the 1990s. As part of the Good Friday Agreement it amended Ireland's constitution to end the territorial claim to Northern Ireland that it had initiated in 1937. Fianna Fail has several traits in common with the Likud: paramilitary origins, a "princes" phenomenon of dynastic succession, populism, irredentism, and corruption. But Dublin was giving up only a claim--not actual possession--and it had not invested much money in the North. Jerusalem has invested hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars in the settlements. Britain was also never a conventional military threat to Ireland as Jordan and Iraq were to Israel from the West Bank in 1948 and 1967.

And in both the cases of Northern Ireland and Ireland coalition governments consisted of two or three parties rather than the four to six that are typical in Israel. In the case of Fianna Fail its coalition partner, the Progressive Democrats, were a positive influence promoting the peace process. Twenty years of the "peace process" in the Middle East have demonstrated that the combination of the Palestine question and Israel's party system is a "toxic combination" in the words of former Mossad analyst Yossi Alpher.

Washington should start seriously looking for a response to the death of the two-state solution.

Splitting Functions

Fianna Fail leader Brian Cowen resigned as party leader recently but retained his position as taoiseach (pronounced tee shuck) or prime minister. A similar division of functions occurred in South Africa under the penultimate white-minority government in 1989. South Africa converted from a parliamentary to a presidential system during the late 1970s and early 1980s. State President Pieter Willem Botha, an autocrat who had moved into the executive office from the defense ministry, suffered a stroke in January 1989. While recovering he decided to drop his leadership of the ruling National Party but continue to function as state president. Frederick Willem de Klerk was elected party leader of the National Party by the caucus of MPs. He gradually organized a revolt among the caucus, which had suffered the slights of an imperious autocrat and saw how Botha's brand of apartheid had served to further isolate South Africa over the years since Botha had taken the helm. In August a coup was launched and the caucus forced Botha to resign his position. New elections were held in September, which resulted in the opposition Democratic Party receiving a record number of seats. This influenced the new State President F.W. de Klerk to make his startling announcement in February 1990 that not only was he releasing Nelson Mandela from prison after 27 years, but he was also unbanning the African National Congress, the Pan-African Congress, and the South African Communist Party and would shortly enter into talks with them about the future of the country.

With elections tentatively scheduled for March 2011, Cowen's hanging on seems to be more in the order of saving the new party leader--to be elected Wednesday--from the embarrassment of being associated with the present government. Fianna Fail's coalition partner, the Green Party, deserted the government on Sunday.

Since being formed in the spring of 1926 and coming to power in 1932, Fianna Fail has ruled for 60 out of the 78 years since then. Normally, after a stint in power of between a decade and sixteen years the electorate would elect a coalition government consisting of the opposition parties for a single term. Then the electorate would be quickly seduced by the promises and nationalist rhetoric of Fianna Fail ("Soldiers of Destiny" in Irish Gaelic) and return the party to power. Even the notorious corruption of the Charles Haughey era from 1980 to 1992 failed to dim the enthusiasm of the public for the soldiers. Maybe it was their pioneering of the Northern Ireland peace process in 1993 that served to keep them in power. FF under Albert Reynolds pioneered the peace process in 1992 and then were deposed in late 1994 by the Labour Party switching coalition partners in the Irish version of the "smelly exercise." But unlike Shimon Peres, Tanaiste (Deputy Prime Minister) and Foreign Minister Dick Spring was able to pull this maneuver off smoothly. But the peace process ran into trouble and the Fine Gael-Labour Party-Democratic Left "Rainbow Coalition" was replaced by Fianna Fail once more in the summer of 1997. The peace process and the Celtic Tiger Irish economic miracle kept the party in power for the next 13 years.

The Likud, another party like Fianna Fail with paramilitary origins and a reputation for corruption, has since 1977 created a similar but less successful track record. Labor was allowed to regain power briefly in 1992-96 and 1999-2001. But the Likud has lacked Fianna Fail's "green thumb" when it comes to the economy and has not managed the peace process well, resulting in pressure from Washington. Now there is little opposition to replace the Likud.

Expect to see Fianna Fail replaced by a Fine Gael-Labour coalition in Ireland very soon. Such coalitions ran the country from 1973 to 1977 and from late 1982 to early 1987 and from 1994 to 1997. We will have to wait three or four years to see if Irish politics subsides into the usual pattern of the soldiers returning to their destiny of power. Or maybe the Irish have wised up, and seeing as Fianna Fail finally renounced its claim to Northern Ireland as part of the peace process in December 1999 and have failed miserably at reviving the Irish language as the working language of the country, maybe the electorate will allow the country to develop normal European politics. That would involve Fine Gael evolving into a centrist party so that instead of two conservative parties and a left-wing party that was much weaker, the electorate could have a real choice between Right and Center-Left. Maybe Israelis will also one day get this choice.

Update: The day after this was posted, the four main establishment parties in Ireland agreed to a deal to get a finance bill that would okay the deal with the European Union for a loan pushed through the Oireachtas (Irish parliament), so that elections won't interrupt this. It now seems likely that there will be an election in late February.

Peace Without Labor?

For thirty years the Israel Labor Party was the Israeli partner of Washington in negotiating peace with the Arabs. The partnership began with the Nixon administration in 1969 when Secretary of State William Rogers tried to negotiate a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace agreement by getting Israel to commit to withdraw completely from all the Sinai and the West Bank. Rogers was in touch with Nasser's government in Cairo and King Hussein's in Amman, but not with the Syrian government in Damascus. Israel demurred with the secret support of both President Nixon and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger. Rogers had been given the Middle East as a harmless issue to play with while Kissinger dealt with Vietnam, the Soviet Union and China. In August 1970 Rodgers managed to negotiate a ceasefire ending the War of Attrition between Egypt and Israel, which Cairo promptly violated by moving SAMs up to the Suez Canal.

From 1973 to 1975 it was Labor that was the Israeli partner to Kissinger's shuttle diplomacy. Kissinger dealt with Prime Ministers Golda Meir and Yitzhak Rabin and with Defense Ministers Moshe Dayan and Shimon Peres, and Foreign Ministers Abba Eban and Yigal Allon. All except Peres are now long dead and Peres is no longer in the Labor Party, having been elected president from Kadima. Labor demonstrated its basic characteristics in the peace process: unable to start initiatives but able to act and come up with solutions under pressure. This was generally due to the influence of Dayan. Labor was ready to make concessions in the Sinai but not on the West Bank, and King Hussein was too weak politically to demand less than the total return of the West Bank.

From 1977 to 1984 Labor was out of power, but it was Labor's votes in the Knesset that helped to pass the Camp David accords in 1978 and the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty in 1979 when key Herut members of Likud either abstained or voted against. Most of the negotiating for the peace process during this time was done by former Labor minister Moshe Dayan as foreign minister and future Labor minister as defense minister.

It was Labor under the leadership of Peres and with Rabin as defense minister that managed Israel's withdrawal from all but the narrow security zone in Lebanon in 1984-85.

And of course it was Labor--again under the leadership of Rabin and Peres--that initiated the Oslo process with the PLO in 1993. This didn't work out so well either because Arafat had no intention from the start of making concessions on either of the two main issues--refugees and Jerusalem--or because he felt Hamas prevented him from doing so. In 2000 Barak showed his strengths and weaknesses. He balked at honoring the "Rabin deposit" of withdrawing from all of the Golan in early 2000 in exchange for normalization. And then at Camp David he went beyond any previous Israeli government in proposing concessions to the Palestinians. Barak ended with a failure to make peace and a failed political career that he has now attempted to revive by carefully aligning himself with his former army subordinate, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Now Labor is left in single digits in the Knesset for the first time in its history, and as a midsize rather than a major party.  The only hope for salvation is Kadima, the bastard child of the Likud fathered by Sharon who was himself a child partly of the Mapai tradition. But before I examine Kadima, I want to look at the precedents for a party of the Right making peace in native-settler conflicts. There are three.

In February 1990, President F.W. de Klerk surprised the world and many within his own National Party by announcing that he was freeing the Rivonia trialists (Mandela et al) from prison, unbanning the liberation movements and preparing to enter into negotiations about the future of the country with them. He did this in response to two stimulae. The first were the economic trade sanctions voted by both the European Economic Community, forerunner of today's European Union, and by the U.S. Congress. The second was that the peace agreement signed in Brazzaville in December 1988 forced Angola to expel the ANC's military camps from its country along with the Cubans in exchange for Namibian independence. The National Party and South Africa were at a position of strength and he had learned from the Rhodesian experience that it is better to negotiate from a position of strength. By the late spring of 1994 South Africa experienced majority rule elections. De Klerk knew that to wait until the blacks were strong enough to drive the whites from power would have meant leaving the Afrikaner people with a ruined national home, ruined by decades of internal strife and economic sanctions.

In Northern Ireland the Democratic Unionists of Ian Paisley in late 2006 agreed to power sharing with Sinn Fein after the IRA had finally decommissioned its arms in September 2005. Paisley was basically agreeing to the Good Friday Agreement with very minor modifications, which the rival Ulster Unionists had done all the heavy lifting for over five years. Neither the conditions of South Africa or Northern Ireland yet apply to Israel.

The third example is that of the dominant Fianna Fail party in the Republic of Ireland. This party ruled for 60 out of the 78 years between its first coming to power in 1932 and the present. In 1937 the party's leader, Eamon de Valera, was responsible for writing a new constitution that claimed the entire island of Ireland for the country. Lip service to a united Ireland and to reviving the Irish language were standards of Fianna Fail's election appeals along with an economic pragmatism. In the 1990s Fianna Fail helped to sponsor the Northern Ireland peace process and agreed to amend its constitution to end the territorial claim to Northern Ireland in exchange for power sharing in the province and a North-South dimension. The constitution was duly amended in December 1999 after power sharing was implemented in Belfast. Fianna Fail has in common with the Likud (and Kadima) paramilitary roots, irredentism, a princes phenomenon, a position of dominance in the political system, and a history of corruption.

Kadima demonstrated last year that it is split almost evenly between supporters of leader Tzipi Livni and former Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz. It is the third and most recent centrist party cobbled together from elements of the two main parties and prominent non-politicos from the civilian world. The first, the Democratic Movement for Change, lasted less than five years--formed in 1976 it split in 1978 and its main wing folded in 1980. The second, the Center Party, lasted from 1999 to 2003. Kadima has outlived both partly because he received many more seats than either: 29 in 2006 compared to 15 for Dash in 1977 and 7 for the Center Party in 1999. Kadima could easily split in two or disintegrate completely with much of its Knesset caucus returning to the Likud. In 2009 its electorate seems to have switched from Sharon supporters in 2006 to many Labor supporters. But Labor and Meretz are both too weak to serve as viable coalition partners for Kadima. Kadima needs the Likud as a partner. Such a centrist coalition depends on the results of the next election and how much the Likud can continue to evolve under Netanyahu.