Seven Things You Must Understand About the Israeli Elections

1. The balance of power inside Israel has been shifting from 1977 away from the traditional elites associated with secular, social democratic, Ashkenazi and liberal values. In 1977 the Likud attracted many Mizrachi votes, Jews from Arab and Muslim countries who experienced some degree of social exclusion. The forces that coalesced around the Likud then are today represented by an array of independent parties all representing specific, large and powerful segments of the electorate: Russian speaking immigrants, Mizrachi and Sephardic pride, settlers and the orthodox parties.

2. Rabid, right wing and neo-fascist views are not new in Israel. In 1984 Rabbi Meir Kahane was elected to the Knesset representing his anti-Arab, anti-democratic and clerical vision for Israel. In 1988 his list was banned. Today, his views - expressed with less spittle and Hitler like speechifying - have spread across nearly a quarter of the new Knesset. Led by Yvette Lieberman of Yisrael Beiteinu, these odious views are likely to become part of Israeli state policy in various areas. State sanctioned discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel will increase, along with gutter level ugliness emitted by cabinet ministers.

3. The Israeli turn to the right, with all of the thuggishness, Jewish fundamentalism and militarism that suggests, will empower Hamas, Hizbullah and other religious and violent factions across the Arab world. Within those factions, internal struggles over between ideologues and realists are more likely to be won by the extremists. The right wing victory in Israel will undermine moderate Arab regimes and US allies, and inspire right wing opponents of President Obama to resist him with greater intensity using his efforts to advance peace as justification.

4. The remnants of the Zionist left have been crushed. Meretz and Labor - the heart of the coalition that Yitzhak Rabin led in 1992 - has been reduced to a handful. Not one of them has the making of an inspirational leader with new ideas. Ehud Barak (Labor) and Hayyim Oron (Meretz) have little to offer the public or their own party diehards. They are faced with a choice: admit that those leaders were wrong, and replace them, admit that their ideas were wrong, and change them, or charge their own former voters with being wrong while preparing to tell them 'we told you so' when prophesies of doom and gloom materialize. Human nature suggests the third option, while Israeli politics allows for it to actually work. It worked for Netanyahu.

5. The right wing strategic vision replaces ending the conflict with managing the conflict. This is a sober and realistic assessment of what is required (from the right wing perspective); a turn towards improving the occupation's efficiency instead of pretending to end it. It also means admitting to educated, secular, urben and kibbutz born Israelis that there is no hope. Israel is doomed to live by the sword for the foreseeable future. This runs counter to the dreams of the founding generation of Israel and to the dominant strain in popular culture. It runs counter to basic human nature, and requires massive amounts of fear and indoctrination to stay in place as the dominant cultural theme. Two things will happen: the exodus of educated and entreprenurial Israelis will continue, and Hamas will do everything in its power to sustain the right wing vision, which in turns helps it stay relevant.

6. President Obama and Hillary Clinton cannot actually influence the diplomatic environment under these circumstances. They have to either work in subtle ways to undermine the new government, hoping it fails spectaculary and is replaces in new elections, accept it and resign themselves to 4-5 years of pretending to make an effort without actually wasting political capital in the Arab world, or give up and walk away Bush style. (I sincerely hope I'm wrong.)

7. Forces in the American Jewish community hoping to pressure the US administration to support peace are in a very difficult situation. Even if they are successful in mobilizing that constituency  they won't see real success on the ground in Israel and Palestine. I hope they have a plan for getting through the lean years until the next round of elections in Israel.