Israel is going to the polls today

Watch Vid here

Marty Peretz, on the Spine , tries to sum up the various possibilities:

For which party would I vote? Let me say I don't know for what exactly Kadima stands. It made a disaster of the 2006 Lebanon war, even though it seems to have deterred Hezbollah enough to stay out of the Gaza confrontation. Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister during Lebanon and now, showed that she simply hadn't the strength to resist the entreaties of Condi Rice who pushed through a cease-fire that left Hezbollah free to smuggle weapons from Syria (and Iran) into the country with impunity. Condi also pushed for a cease-fire in Gaza without bothering to attend to the matter of the resupply of arms to Hamas, an issue that is still being negotiated, sort of. These twin stories are yet to be written, and they will show how credulous the hard-assed George Bush was when Ms. Rice tried her charms on him. In any case, Kadima is a party of opportunists and it's anybody's guess where it stands.

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Yes, Netanyahu is a tough guy, like Barak, maybe less analytical but conceptually sharp and broad. He made concessions when concessions were needed, as in Hebron, and does not pretend that every piece of the West Bank or even most of it needs to be in Israel's control. But, if there are to be Palestinians in Israel (as there are and have been for 60 years), then there is every reason to believe that there can be Israelis in Palestine.

By the way, I count both Barak and Netanyahu as friends, and I believe that's how they see me. I've met Livni only once, on an El Al flight.

The comments are also interesting to read, especially Ginzy's (at the forty-something comment). Commenters on TNR, unlike in other Internet places (some of which are populated by ignorant savants) , are generally knowledgeable, articulate and make some very cogent arguments.

I spoke of Livni, here and here.