10 may 2012, and again: we have failed

For thirty years I was obsessed with israeli politics, yet I realised how remote it has become when it was quite a shock to read yesterday that kadima had joined the coalition. As they originally split from likud, it should not really be a surprise, yet just a year or two ago they were the last force closest to the peace camp left standing. Things change though, labour having now bounced back to being the opposition and kadima, having ditched their once-excellent leader, now feeling they had little to lose by moving back into a renewed likud bloc. With 94 of the knesset's 120 seats, the move completes the likud and netanyahu's journey from spent force to a domination not seen since the days of david ben gurion. As to what this means for the peace process, there's always the nixon goes to china hope that like menachim begin and camp david, it is the right that may make the breakthrough. But if we've learnt one thing about netanyahu's decades on the scene, it is that his entire career has been based on frustrating any efforts towards peace or palestinian statehood and with peaceniks more powerless than ever there's no reason at all to expect that to change. The reason I am so far away from this now is that when I do get to think about it, this hopeless situation is one of the saddest burdens I carry. As I wrote in one of my first blogs (21 september 2009) - we have failed.