THIRTY thousand votes. That was the final margin of Benjamin Netanyahu's victory over Labour's Shimon Peres in the battle to take Israel into the next millennium.
A victory of less than 1 per cent will now see Israel ruled by a coalition of right wing and religious parties, and the enthusiasm of the Rabin Peres stewardship of the peace process replaced by caution and mistrust.
Having lost an election they were certain they had wrapped up, Labour's leaders were fighting among themselves last night, blaming each other and blaming Israeli Arabs for the failure.
But while it is true that some 19,000 (about 5 per cent) Arab citizens voted for Mr Netanyahu, and some 10 to 15 per cent placed blank ballot slips to indicate their dissatisfaction with both candidates, the Arab turnout was an unprecedentedly high 77 per cent, and it would be fairer for Labour to acknowledge that it was only thanks to the Arab vote that Mr Peres came anywhere near to winning. Among Jewish voters, after all, Mr Netanyahu won by a decisive 10 per cent.
Furthermore, if Labour has anyone to blame for the less than 100 per cent support of the Arabs, it is surely Mr Peres himself, who sullied his peacemaker's image at home and in the Arab world by launching April's misguided Operation Grapes of Wrath assault on Lebanon. The bombardment was a failure on a political and a military level yesterday, Israel buried four soldiers killed on Thursday in a Hizbullah ambush.
So disillusioned were many Arab leaders by last month's bombardment, that some, including the Palestinian politician Dr Hanan Ashrawi, have suggested hat there may be no great difference between a Peres led and a Netanyahu led Israel. But such assessments seem absurd in the eight of Mr Peres's zeal for the pursuit of the peace process, contrasted with Mr Netanyahu's grudging acceptance of the need to work out some kind of accommodation with the Palestinians.
Mr Peres was the visionary who persuaded Yitzhak Rabin to take a chance on peace with Mr Arafat Mr Netanyahu does not wish to even meet the Palestinian leader.
While the Rabin Peres government froze funding for Jewish settlements on West Bank land, Mr Netanyahu is determined to expand Jewish settlement.
And while the Peres administration sought "creative solutions" to resolve Palestinian demands for partial control of Jerusalem, Mr Netanyahu has said he has no intention of so much as discussing Jerusalem's future status in any forum with the Palestinians.
The likely orientation of the Netanyahu government will be easier to gauge once the make up of the coalition and cabinet are resolved. It seems likely that the most extreme right wing party in the Knesset, Moledet, will not be invited to join, and Mr Netanyahu will obtain his Knesset majority instead through a partnership of his own Likud, various religious parties, a new immigrant party and the centrist Third Way.
David Levy, a relative moderate, will return to the Foreign Ministry where he served under Yitzhak Shamir. Ariel Sharon is tipped to be finance minister and a key adviser on relations with the Palestinians.
Rafael Eitan, the other implacable hard liner in Mr Netanyahu's team, may have to settle for a middling ministerial post.
The big question remains the identity of Mr Netanyahu's choice of defence minister, the appointment of most significance in terms of Mr Netanyahu's relationship with Mr Arafat's Palestinian Authority.
David Horovitz is managing editor of the Jerusalem Report Reuter adds Israeli jets rocketed a Hizbullah post in eastern Lebanon yesterday, wounding five civilians, in apparent retaliation for a guerrilla bombing that killed four Israeli soldiers on Thursday. An off duty Lebanese soldier was also injured, security sources said. All six injured were hit by broken glass or shrapnel in their homes.
The houses were about 200 metres from the target of the attack a hilltop overlooking the outskirts of Baalbek which Hizbullah has used as an anti aircraft position and ammunition dump.