AFTER THE almost dead heat in Tuesday’s elections, both Benjamin Netanyahu and Tzipi Livni contacted the smaller parties yesterday with the aim of forming a coalition. However, Labor’s decision to go into opposition makes it almost certain that Mr Netanyahu will be Israel’s next prime minister.
The left-wing Labor party, headed by defence minister Ehud Barak, suffered its worst defeat, winning only 13 seats. The party that led Israel until the late 1970s was even overtaken by the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu.
Mr Barak, who was widely tipped to continue as defence minister in any future government, told Labor members that the party could only rebuild from the opposition benches.
Labor would have been the natural partner in a coalition headed by Tzipi Livni’s centrist Kadima, which ended up as the largest party, with 28 seats in the 120-seat Knesset. Without Labor, Ms Livni has almost no chance of cobbling a coalition together.
With soldiers’ votes still to be counted today, the right-wing parties are hoping they may receive an extra seat or two, and Likud may even draw level with Kadima.
Officials from parties that won 65 Knesset seats are expected to recommend to president Shimon Peres next week that Mr Netanyahu form the next government, even though his right-wing Likud party won only 27 seats, one fewer than Kadima.
However Mr Netanyahu will not want to head a narrow coalition based solely on right-wing and religious parties. Such a coalition would leave Likud at the mercy of the smaller parties’ demands.
Two of Mr Netanyahu’s natural coalition partners, the secular Yisrael Beiteinu and the ultra-orthodox Shas, are also diametrically opposed on issues of religion and state, such as permitting civil marriages.
An avowedly right-wing coalition may also be perceived abroad, and particularly by the new administration in Washington, as an obstacle to peace. US state department spokesman Robert Wood said yesterday that Washington was looking forward to working with whatever new government is formed as a result of the inconclusive elections.
Mr Netanyahu made clear during the campaign his preference for a broad-based unity government. He spent yesterday meeting potential coalition partners. He is aiming to garner the support of a majority of Knesset members and then appeal to Kadima to join his government.
Ms Livni claimed victory after the exit polls were published and declared “today the people have chosen Kadima”. She will be reluctant to serve as a junior partner in a Netanyahu-led government.
Senior Likud officials have already ruled out any system of rotation, whereby both Mr Netanyahu and Ms Livni would serve two-year terms as prime minister.
It is expected that the bargaining will take at least four weeks.
Only at the end of this period will we know if Mr Netanyahu succeeded in bringing Kadima on board.