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Center-Left voters showed more prudence in the Israeli elections Tuesday than Center-Right voters.Enough of the former switched from Ehud Barak’s Center-Left Labor Party and the smaller left-wing Meretz to enable Tzipi Livni’s centrist Kadima to beat-possibly-Bibi Netanyahu’s Center-Right Likud by 28 Knesset seats to 27 (out of 120).The still-uncounted soldiers’ and other votes could yet push Likud into a tie or even, just possibly, a lead over Kadima.But the Center-Left voters’ prudence came at the price of very poor showings by Labor (13 seats) and Meretz (3). As of Wednesday afternoon, Barak and other Laborites were claiming Labor was headed for the opposition benches and wouldn’t join any coalition. The demise of Labor—once the spearhead of Zionism and the party of mythic figures like David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, and Moshe Dayan—correlates with its shift from values of democratic socialism, land settlement, and moderate hawkishness to the peace-at-any-price values of the emergent Israeli chattering class.The Center-Right voters, for their part, did exactly what Netanyahu pleaded with them not to do in the last phase of the campaign: they divided their votes widely enough—among six parties and particularly Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel Our Home), which won support by demanding loyalty of Israeli Arabs—to enable Likud’s narrow loss to Kadima.But with the Center-Right as a bloc now totaling 64 seats to the Center-Left’s 56—and with 12 of those 56 belonging to anti-Zionist Arab parties—it is thought likely that President Shimon Peres will give Netanyahu the nod, rather than Livni, to try and form a coalition. If so, Bibi’s task will be hard but by no means impossible.....By P David Hornik
P. David Hornik is a freelance writer and translator living in Tel Aviv. He blogs at http://pdavidhornik.typepad.com/.
P. David Hornik is a freelance writer and translator living in Tel Aviv. He blogs at http://pdavidhornik.typepad.com/.
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As in the days of Noah....
