Post Election

Tuesday’s Israeli elections managed to pull a few surprises out of the ballot box.

While, as predicted, the centrist Kadima party won the most seats – 28 out of the 120 in the Knesset – the right-winged Likud Party, which has had a domineering presence in this country for over thirty years, was reduced to fifth party status, taking only 11 seats. As one commentator wrote, the results are a stinging rejection of Netanyahu - the politician and the ideology. (Horovitz, "Analysis"

Twelve of the thirty-one parties vying for seats met the 2% threshold for inclusion in the Knesset. Left of centre Labour takes 20 seats, the “Pensioners” party surprising everyone by going from no seats to seven. Israel has a nation-wide proportional electoral system in which one votes for a party, not a candidate. The seats are then distributed amongst the parties according to the proportion of the popular vote they garnered.

While Likud has been dealt what some describe as a “death blow”, hard-lined nationalist sentiment has not. Shas and Israel Beitenu took third and fourth seat counts.

The challenge now is for Prime Minister elect, Ehud Olmert, to assemble at least sixty-one Members of the Knesset into a coalition agreed upon pursuing his intention to unilaterally set final borders for the State of Israel by the time of the next election in 2010