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Israel's Surprise Issue

(Washington Post) E. J. Dionne Jr. - * The world expected Israel to have an election on national security, but the voters decided that it was about the economy, stupid. Tuesday's vote was supposed to be the "big bang" in which the Kadima party, led by Ehud Olmert, the acting prime minister, won a mandate for a new political center built around a unilateral evacuation from large parts of the West Bank. But the energy in the election was around social and economic issues, and the big winners were a group of parties that ran against social inequality. * Stanley Greenberg, an American pollster who worked for the Labor Party, noted that outsiders might find it strange that economics trumped security as a voting issue even after Hamas won the recent Palestinian elections. "It would be like having al-Qaeda winning the election in Mexico and then having an American election on prescription drugs," Greenberg said. * Paradoxically, domestic social concerns rose to the top of voters' minds precisely because the security situation is frozen. Most Israelis do not see how negotiations are possible with Hamas.
2006-03-31 00:00:00
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