- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon News

Jesse Ventura's gaffe riot
From dumb racial jokes to self-serving politics, the Minnesota governor's past predicted his future.
By Jake Tapper
[05/07/99]

Bungling in Buffalo
Fugitive James Kopp is finally charged in the killing of an abortion doctor after the FBI harasses the wrong men.
By Jeff Stein
[05/06/99]

Macedonia closes border
Thousands of Kosovar Albanians are stranded or turned back.
By Rob Mank
[05/06/99]

Declaring war on undeclared war
A lawsuit could force President Clinton to get Congress' OK on Kosovo.
By Jake Tapper
[05/06/99]

Endangered congressman?
Former allies target a term-limit promise-breaker.
By Jake Tapper
[05/05/99]

Complete archives for News

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Since the end of the 1980s, about 800,000 immigrants have arrived from Russia and the other countries of the former Soviet Union. Including those who emigrated to Israel in the pre-Gorbachev era, the Russian-speaking immigrants now number around one million and account for 17 percent of the electorate. Their arrival has injected a highly volatile element into a country already struggling with gaping social, cultural and political divides between secular and religious Jews, and between Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern European origins and Sephardic Jews with roots in North Africa and the Middle East. Perhaps the most prominent political schism is between those who favor territorial compromise with the Palestinians and those who oppose it.

Against this backdrop, the new immigrant block has emerged as a critical group of swing voters in Israel’s political landscape. As Israel prepares for national elections on May 17 -- elections that will determine the future course of negotiations with the Palestinians -- it is clear that the new immigrants will play a key role in determining the outcome. Both major parties –- the right of center Likud Party led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Labor Party led by Ehud Barak –- are belatedly recognizing the power of the new immigrant vote.

Whatever the outcome of the current elections, political instability in Russia and the other former Soviet republics assures that the inflow of new immigrants will not end anytime soon. And Natan Sharansky, for one, warns that it would be a mistake for anyone to take the Russians for granted.

"The bulk of [Israeli] voters have been here for years or generations, so a relatively small percentage change their position," says Natan Sharansky, a former Soviet dissident who shocked Israeli pundits in 1996 when his newly formed Israel B'aliyah party won seven seats in the 120-member Israeli parliament. "But the Russians are newcomers, and their vote is not yet firmly ideological. It is a floating vote, not linked too closely with any party, which makes them very attractive for all the parties."

The surprising success of Sharansky's party in 1996 -- when Israelis for the first time cast separate votes for prime minister and for political parties in the parliament -- gave Russian immigrants their first taste of voting power. Now, they realize they are key players in Israeli electoral politics. "There are so many of us here now that the politicians all realize that they can't win an election without us, they can't form a government without our support," said Shurik Lifshitz, a middle-aged photographer who emigrated from the former Soviet Union in 1991.

Next page | It's Israeli security, stupid.