The Secret of Kadima

Public opinion polls indicate that the Israeli political party Kadima will get approximately 40 seats in the next elections to the 120-member Knesset. This is an unprecedented success for a new party in Israel's rather conservative electoral scene. What is the reason for this phenomenal performance?

There was an early warning in the last elections, held in January 2003: Shinui, a centrist liberal party, raised its share in the Knesset to 15 seats from 6, while both Labor and Meretz - two parties on the left of center - lost 11 seats. It was not difficult to sense that something was afoot. That something was a change in the mood of the Israeli public.

As opinion polls have shown throughout the last decade, a substantial majority of Israelis opted for the 2-state solution, relinquished the ideas of greater Israel and were ready to give up at least some of the Jewish settlements in the territories. Shinui allowed this new mood to find expression.

Labor and Meretz could not exploit this new mood, as due to their own dogmatic reasons, or rather to the traditional leftist instinct of self-destruction, they went into a spiral of pro-Palestinian sentiments that alienated them from this new mainstream.

This leftward theme found expression in both parties: Labor's leader in the last elections was ready to give up the Israeli-American demand that the Palestinians cease their terror before any peace negotiations begin. Mertez went even further and adopted the "Geneva understandings, which incorporate a compromise on the right of Palestinians' "return" to Israel as well as the preposterous idea that the Arab States be paid "compensation for hosting the refugees" - and this, without even mentioning compensation to Jewish refugees from Arab countries.

The result of this extremism was amazing: In two elections, May 1999 and January 2003, Labor and Meretz lost almost half of their seats in the Knesset. On the other hand, Likud could not make use of this new mood, as it has been hostage to both its ideology and the infiltration of extremists from the religious right to its governing bodies. Thus Shinui gained by avoiding both extremes - Likud and the Left.

Prime Minister Sharon sensed this new mood when he decided on withdrawal from Gaza. He was in the minority in his party but had a substantial majority in the public opinion polls, which reflected the big shift: from supporting a greater Israel to fervent insistence on a Jewish majority in Israel. Thus Kadima was born with the slogan that appealed to many Israelis: establish permanent borders that will ensure a sustainable Jewish majority. Kadima's predicted success is therefore nothing more than the adjustment of the political map to the transformation of Israeli public opinion.

There are precedents for such adjustments: de Gaulle's electoral success suited the French national will to put an end to the costly war in Algeria without bending over to the pro-Algerian sentiment which pervaded French intellectuals on the Left. The result of this shift, the French fifth republic, was not only the end of a painful and bloody conflict but also the beginning of a new age of French progress and prosperity. The two situations are not identical; Algeria, unlike the Palestinian territories, lay across the sea and never threatened the security of metropolitan France. Yet, the electoral process is similar in both cases and, one hopes, so will be its results.

Mr. Rubinstein is president of the Inter-disciplinary Center Herzliyah and an Israel Prize laureate for 2006.