Thursday, January 05, 2006

Pausing for Politics


I don't usually write about the political scene here. Not because I live in an Israeli version of Never Land where I play with the Llamas and chimps all day and retire to my oxygen tank at night, impervious to the country's goings-on.

Rather, I worked for years in hard core journalism here and part of the reason I left was burnout. So after spending just under a decade within the soft, gentle borders of San Francisco, I am trying to take the Zen approach: Observe impassively.

BUT I have to admit my alarm this morning upon reading about Arik Sharon's massive brain hemmorhage and current "struggle to hang on", as described by the Hebrew press.

What happens now? Even if he recovers, paralysis, impeded motor skills and loss of speech are probably guaranteed. He's not leading anyone anywhere anymore, period.

So is his attempt at forming a middle of the road, somewhat progressive party going to go down the drain or will Ehud Olmert, his 2nd in command, take over and lead the party to March elections? And does this mean that, horror of horrors, Bibi Netanyahu has a fighting chance of becoming Prime Minister AGAIN?

This could be scary or very positive...

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