With only a few thousands absentee ballots left to tally, it appears that Israel’s next prime minister is likely to be the Likud’s thuggish Binyamin Netanyahu, as expected. Recall that the reason this election was called in the first place was that Kadima leader Tzipi Livni was unable to cobble together a coalition following Ehud Olmert’s resignation in disgrace a few months ago.
At that time, when Kadima, Labour, Meretz, and Gil, the pensioners’ party held 60 seats between them, she still needed the religious Shas party to garner a majority in the Knesset, and Shas declined to join her coalition. Now, with the three parties of the so called ‘left’ scoring a total of 44 seats – Gil has not won any seats in the new Knesset – it will be impossible to form a majority government without including either Likud, Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu, or Shas, even if she were to invite Hadash, or one of the Arab parties – Ta’al or Balad – which of course is unthinkable.
The New Dark Age 