Implications of the Israeli Election for George Mitchell’s work

His second day in office, President Obama appointed former senator George Mitchell as the American special envoy to the Middle East, indicating he wanted to make the region a top priority on his foreign agenda. But a perceivable shift to the right in Tuesday’s election results in Israel may hinder Obama’s hopes for a swift peace between Israel and Palestine, Griff Witte and Glenn Kessler report in The Washington Post. Aaron David Miller, former U.S. peace negotiator, puts it this way:

This is like hanging a “closed for the season” sign on any peacemaking for the next year or so.

Kessler and Witte write that although the results themselves remain incomplete, the anticipation that an Israeli government “uninterested in peace talks” will emerge to form a governing coalition is strong. The gains of the ultra-nationalist party Beiteinu and Israel’s right-wing Likud party don’t seem to bode well for Obama’s immediate agenda.