Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu surprised the leader of the opposition, Tzipi Livni, with an offer to join the Likud-led right of center coalition government, saying Israel was faced with existential choices that required a broad coalition to form a unity government. By existential choice, Netanyahu is referencing Iran. The Kadima leader, and the former Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni did not reject the proposal out of hand.  The story in Haaretz:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked opposition leader Tzipi Livni, the chairwoman of Kadima, on Thursday to join a unity government. Livni did not immediately reject the offer, and added that if the offer is real "I always said that it is up for discussion."

Livni clarified that any decision regarding Kadima's moves will be taken by the party after thorough discussion and not by her alone.

Netanyahu told Livni that Kadima's addition to the government was crucial in light of the local and global challenges facing Israel today.

During their meeting, which lasted about 90 minutes, Netanyahu briefed Livni on political and security issues on the government's agenda, telling her that the basis for joining a unity government would be principles of peace and security that he outlined in his foreign policy speech at Bar Ilan University in June.

Netanyahu offered Livni to include four Kadima members in inner cabinet discussions, should Kadima join the proposed unity government, but he didn't offer ministerial portfolios.

The meeting between the prime minister and the opposition leader comes on the tail of Livni's accusation earlier Thursday that Netanyahu was trying to split Kadima, currently embroiled in a proxy war over the faction's leadership.

Kadima No. 2 Shaul Mofaz on Thursday demanded that Livni take the party to primary elections, telling reporters after their afternoon meeting that he hoped she would "listen to others, for once" and keep the party from breaking up.

The rift at the top of Kadima worsened on Wednesday, after MK Mofaz lashed out at Livni, saying it was her lack of leadership that has reportedly led 14 of Kadima's 27 MKs to start negotiations with Likud about moving to that party.

Mofaz met Livni at her north Tel Aviv home on Thursday afternoon, hours before the faction's council was to convene to discuss the future of the party.

Livni told Mofaz during the talks that she feared Netanyahu was "trying to split Kadima. It's on the table and it's a fact." She urged Mofaz, along with other senior members of the party to do everything possible to keep Netanyahu from "weakening Kadima."

Kadima, a centrist party by Israeli standards with 27 seats, is the largest single party in the 120-member Knessett. Israeli political observers seem to think that Netanyahu's offer is not much more than an attempt to destroy his only significant internal opposition by luring about a dozen of Kadima members to form a breakaway party and join the government.

Certainly events in the Middle East have been moving quickly over the latter part of 2009: a financial collapse in Dubai; a tribal revolt by a Shi'ite minority that has led to a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran in Yemen; US drone attacks in Yemen targeting Al-Qaeda operatives; a border dispute between Iran and Iraq amidst attacks on Shi'ites; an Egyptian move to seal off the Gaza Strip; a rapprochement between Syria and Turkey that perhaps has left the Israelis worried; a historic visit to Damascus by Saad Hariri, the new prime minister of Lebanon; an Al-Qaeda attack against a Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Nayef in Riyadh; and the on-going but going nowhere talks between the West and Iran over the nuclear issue now set against the backdrop of increasing protests and unrest in the Islamic Republic. Never a dull moment.

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When my attention was drawn to the article quoted below by Diane Nakamura, I suddenly realized that it is not Iran that intends to "wipe Israel off the map," but it is Israel that intends to "wipe Palestine off the map." And that is not just a threat. It is the reality.

Observers of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict often talk about the Hamas Charter, and the earlier PLO Charter, but no one speaks of the intents of the Likud Charter, the Bible of Israel's Likud party now in power to wipe Palestine off the map. But that is precisely what has been happening for the past 60 years.

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Fresh off its worst electoral showing in its history garnering just 334,900 votes or 9.9% of the electorate, Israel's Labor Party Central Committee voted in favor of joining Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition. Labor Chairman and the current Defense Minister Ehud Barak drafted the deal with Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu.

But half of the left-leaning party's lawmakers objected to teaming up with the Likud leader due to his long-standing opposition to peace efforts. Ehud Barak made his appeal to join the Netanyahu coalition invoking slain Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin. In an impassioned speech before the vote, Ehud Barak said "we are responsible for the Labor Party, but we also have a responsibility to the state of Israel, to peace, to security. We don't have a back-up country, Yitzhak Rabin said that, and it is still true."

"Labor voters want to see us in the government, they want to see us there because we don't have a spare country," Mr. Barak added. I'm not so sure. I tend to agree with Kadima's Yohanan Plesner who said that Labor had "signed its own death warrant."

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Israel's Labour Party is history. Yglesias sums it up:

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Barak Obama's "Jewish problem" is back again.

Cecilie Surasky of Muzzlewatch, a subsidiary of Jewish Voice for Peace, posted this re-assessment of Barak Obama's presidential candidacy by members of right wing Zionist organizations, all strongly supported by AIPAC, in the United States this morning. Jewish Voice for Peace is a grassroots peace organization dedicated to promoting a US foreign policy in the Middle East based on peace, democracy, human rights and respect for international law, while Muzzlewatch seeks to create an open atmosphere for debate about US-Israeli foreign policy by counteracting censorship and intimidation concerning the publication of Israeli-Palestinian news in the US.

In (Some) Jews Against Obama, Cecile Sarasky notes: "the Nation's Eric Alterman has the most in-depth roundup I've seen yet of charges leveled against Obama by various American Likudnik Jewish leaders including Mort Klein of the the Zionist Organization of America, Malcolm Hoenlein of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and a counsel at the American Jewish Committee."

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