My name is Aaron David Miller; I'm a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. I worked as a former Middle East negotiator and adviser to a number of Republican and Democratic secretaries of state.
The overall dynamic, it seems to me, is governed by a rapidly deteriorating security situation and profound mistrust and suspicion on the part of most Israelis of their neighbors. Most Israelis look at the world, even those who are determined or interested in pursuing a two-state solution or an agreement with the Syrians, and see a glass pretty much half-empty or worse than half-empty.
Hezbollah sits in Lebanon, seemingly impervious to Israeli military action in the summer of 2006. Hamas sits in Gaza and although the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) comported itself from a military point of view much more effectively in the 22 days in which it operated by air and on the ground in Gaza, Hamas seems to have been weakened militarily but has retained its political saliency and viability. In the West Bank, a well-intentioned but weak Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, remains a leader that is really a prisoner of his constituencies rather than a master of his politics.
And further up to the north, Iran sits, developing an enrichment cycle for uranium and moving ever closer maybe within the next 18 months to two years to producing a nuclear weapon.
So this will be an election dominated in large part by security. And as you look at the two candidates -- three, but the two who are most likely to be competitive -- Benjamin Netanyahu, former prime minister and minister of finance, a graduate of elite paratrooper brigade, on one hand, and Tzipi Livni, who is tough and pragmatic but with no military experience, a former Mossad (Israel's national intelligence agency) operative and currently foreign minister.
The choice that most Israelis see, even though they may be unhappy with both candidates, is a choice over demonstrated experience in the case of Netanyahu or at least the perception that he understands security issues and he's tough on the Arabs, versus Livni who has very little operational military experience, and who is perceived to have ambiguous positions on issues. The fact that she's a woman and could be only the second female prime minister in Israel's history probably doesn't help her much and may actually hurt her with certain religious constituencies.
So this is very much an election, which will be determined in my view by the perception of who is tough strong and security minded.
I think the primary challenge for the next Israeli prime minister is as it has been for all of their predecessors, it really involved matters relating to war and peace. No Israeli prime minister can be viable without ensuring the people of Israel that he or she is sensitive and tough and determined to protect Israel's security.
At the same time, all Israeli prime ministers are charged varying degrees depending on the opportunities and their own proclivities with pursuing Arab-Israeli peace and testing the proposition that in fact Israel might be able to have a more normalized relationship with their neighbors.
Finally, there is the matter of the economy, but this strikes me frankly as a situation in which most Israelis have very low expectations. They understand that the world is suffering from a global shock and economic recession, and even the best efforts of a committed (U.S. President) Barack Obama may fall short in that regard.
There's also the issue of managing the relationship with the United States, Israel's most important ally, and no Israeli prime minister can be re-elected if the perception is that somehow he or she has bungled or made a mess of those relationships.
Specifically, the overriding challenge regardless of who is elected will be how to deal with Iran, and Iran's behavior -- its support for Hamas and Hezbollah, but specifically Iran's determination it appears to acquire enough highly enriched uranium to produce a weapon.
Israeli parliamentary elections on Tuesday will decide the country's next prime minister, a post held by the centrist Kadima party. But after the 2006 war with Lebanon and new tensions with Gaza, it appears the public may be shifting more toward the right and the Likud party. Mideast analyst Aaron David Miller, author of "The Much Too Promised Land", talks about the dynamics leading up to the vote.
