New politics emerge on both sides of the Israeli border

Israel has a new dominant political party, which is committed to withdrawing from some of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and solidifying the borders of a Jewish state that can function along side a Palestinian neighbor -- and protect itself from that neighbor if need be.
The centrist Kadima Party won the most seats in the Knesset, Israel's parliament. But with just 29 seats in a 120-seat legislature, its leaders will have to build a coalition with the Labor Party and at least two other parties to achieve a 61-seat majority.
Kadima was formed by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who split with his pro-settlement Likud Party before being felled by a stroke. Likud is a shadow of its former self, winning only 11 seats in the new parliament.
Sharon's heir as leader of Kadima is Ehud Olmert.
Meanwhile, at the very moment that a conciliatory party is taking a tenuous grasp on power in Israel, Hamas, is assuming power in the Palestinian territories. Hamas, which was responsible for dozens of deadly suicide bombings in Israel over the past decade, is based on a charter that calls for the destruction of Israel. Hamas leaders have refused to repudiate violence or acknowledge the rights of Palestinians and Israelis to live side-by-side, even in the face of losing hundreds of millions of dollars in Western aid to the Palestinians.
There was a day when the election of a party such as Kadima, made up of leaders with a conservative history and a liberal view of the future, would have been seen as real progress toward peace. But the political movement today isn't so much about an idealized peace as it is about a practical coexistence.
Internal compromise
By a slim margin, most Israelis now view the settlements as a burden on the state and an impediment to peace. They would rather have an intact state that is democratic in character than a larger state in turmoil, even if many of them continue to believe that a larger state is their biblical entitlement.
If Hamas has the wisdom to see that it should exert its energies toward the practical goal of improving the standard of living for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, rather than pursue an ideology based on the hatred of everything Jewish, there might be a semblance of peace.
Unfortunately, the United States is not in a position to act as a mediator in the Middle East, as it once was. U.S. policy in the region is necessarily focused on shoring up the government of Iraq so that American troops can be withdrawn. And, unless Hamas makes a public declaration that it has abandoned terrorism, the United States cannot even recognize its government.