Kadima's future

The sage Hillel, who lived at the end of the Second Temple period, was quoted in Pirkei Avot ("Ethics of the Fathers") as saying: "Because you drowned others, they drowned you; and those that drowned you will eventually be drowned." As has often been remarked, there is no happiness like schadenfreude. The party of the deserters is crumbling. Thus it will be done (by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) to Kadima, the party that split Netanyahu's Likud.

But why raise the banner of Israel's security in vain? When it comes to backing for Israeli action against Iran, Netanyahu needs U.S. President Barack Obama, not Kadima chairwoman Tzipi Livni. And if action is taken (and with Netanyahu at the helm, it doesn't look likely), Kadima will stand with the government; it has already committed to this.

As is his wont, Netanyahu has been oscillating wildly. He was raised as an adherent of the Land of Israel and this is part of his very being. But as prime minister, he is heading toward the partition of the country. History will record him as the one who gave Hebron to the Palestinians, and in his Bar-Ilan University address, he declared his support for two states for two peoples.

Between one concession and the next, he is also a realist. All indications, Netanyahu reassures us, are that there is no chance of the Palestinians ever recognizing Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people, conceding the refugees' right of return, or accepting a united Jerusalem as Israel's capital. Therefore, what he said in his Bar-Ilan speech has no practical significance. This is also how the prime minister attempts to strike an emotional balance between his identity and his weaknesses.

Former Meretz leader Yossi Beilin - who has good sources, especially in the United States - said that under American pressure, Netanyahu would halt construction in the settlements. Two months later, Netanyahu presented just such a plan. Now Beilin says Netanyahu has told the Americans he is prepared to withdraw, with some adjustments, to the 1967 lines. Following the premier's meeting with President Hosni Mubarak this week, the Egyptians corroborated this report.

So the cat is out of the bag. It is not to confront Iran, but rather to confront the majority of his own party - which would adamantly opposes such a weakening of his positions - that Netanyahu needs Kadima. And if it comes to this, he, too, like Ariel Sharon before him, will manage to splinter an Israeli political party: his own.

If the heirs to Ze'ev Jabotinsky had a trace of his greatness as a statesman and leader, they would act in accordance with his "iron wall" principle of strength in the face of Arab hostility. In fact, however, it is they, not the enemy, who are destroying it. Their weakness is strengthening the Arab belief that the wall of Israel's existence, which was achieved through such valor and at the expense of so much blood, is cracking and crumbling. With a little patience (and what is 60, 70 or 100 years in the historical context?), the Jews will bring it down upon themselves from within. This Arab belief was justifiably bolstered when the prime minister who built his career on "never giving in to terror" capitulated in the Gilad Shalit case as well.

But in one very important area, Netanyahu does need Kadima: to serve as a political counterweight to the ultra-Orthodox, in order to transform them from a growing burden to productive partners in building the Israeli state and Israeli society. With Kadima's help, Netanyahu could return to one of his own signal achievements as finance minister and continue cutting child allowances - thereby reducing, and ultimately eliminating, the flow of billions of shekels that perpetuates a society that has lost its way and is atrophying, a sin in which every Israeli government has been complicit.

What today is called a "blossoming" - a society of scholars that disassociates itself from the real life of Israel and the world - is in practice an idealization of the fear of coping with reality. Ultimately, when the state can no longer fund this anomaly, the bubble will burst with tremendous force. And then, not even its role as political kingmaker will be able to save ultra-Orthodox society from descent into the abyss.

If Netanyahu were to enlist Kadima on this issue, or if Kadima were to condition its entry into the government on it, Kadima would achieve greatness. And Netanyahu would be remembered, in the long run even by the ultra-Orthodox themselves, as someone who effected a dramatic turnabout in Jewish society. With the addition of hundreds of thousands of productive workers, Israel's economy would flourish. And the army, after a period of transition and adjustment, would benefit from a substantial boost in its ranks and a reduction in dependence on reserve soldiers.

That is Livni's real challenge - not the expulsion of Jews, the destruction of their communities and the partition of the country. Others will take care of destroying and uprooting us.