Tzipi Livni, leader of the centrist Kadima party in Israel, was right this week to lead it into negotiations with the right-wing Likud party, who it beat at the poles but whose leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, is nevertheless more likely to become Israel's next Prime Minister. If, as Livni herself suggested, those talks fell apart yesterday because Likud refused to accept the two-state principle in the Palestinian conflict, then she was also right to reject the deal. It would be impossible for an Israeli government to negotiate honestly with the Palestinians without first agreeing on such a solution as the desired outcome, and it would be better for Kadima to retreat into opposition than to participate in a government possessing no real plan to bring about peace.
Nenatyahu will now turn to the religious right and entice them into an unholy marriage with the hard-line secularist Yisrael Beiteinu party who have already agreed to back Likud. The best hope for the cause of peace is that such a coalition will be as fragile as its religious incoherence suggests, and that it collapses before it can do too much harm to the battered peace process. Whether Isreali voters will deliver a more practicable distribution of power at the next election is, to say the least, somewhat moot.
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