ISRAEL: Israel's Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon is urging the opposition Labour Party to join him in a "unity government" after exit polls in yesterday's general elections showed him returned to office at the head of a massively-strengthened Likud party.
Amid record low voter turnouts, reflecting public apathy bordering on despondence over the relentless conflict with the Palestinians, the exit polls showed Mr Sharon's hardline Likud boosting its standing from 19 seats in the last parliament to 33-36 this time.
The new Knesset is also markedly more right-wing in composition than its predecessor.
Most of the votes will be tallied by this morning, but the exit polls showed the Likud soaring at the expense of the main opposition Labour Party, reduced to a mere 17-19 seats from 26 last time.
Shinui, a centrist grouping led by a former journalist who campaigned against political corruption and ultra-Orthodox draft dodging, was the day's other major success after the Likud, winning between 14 and 17 seats, according to the exit polls.
Mr Yossi Sarid, leader of the leftist Meretz party, announced his resignation after the polls showed his party losing three of its 10 seats.
Casting his ballot in Jerusalem, Mr Sharon (74) said he hoped the new parliament would last through to late 2007, serving its full term - something that has not happened for 15 years.
"I hope this will be the last time we will have elections in the next four years," he said.
Yet the comment was made more in hope than in expectation. Today Mr Sharon begins an uphill battle to pull together a stable coalition. If the final results reflect the exit polls, he will have several options but none of them particularly attractive.
Ideally, as the Prime Minister has emphasised again and again, he would prefer Labour as his main coalition partner.
However, the Labour leader, Mr Amram Mitzna, is adamant he will not help sustain Mr Sharon in power, principally because of Mr Sharon's refusal to re-engage with the current Palestinian leadership at the negotiating table.
And while some Labour knives may be out for Mr Mitzna after the party's poor election performance, all of his Labour rivals purport to share his antipathy to another "unity government".
Mr Sharon's first mission, in the days or even weeks of coalition bargaining which lie ahead, will be to target weak links in the Labour chain of resistance, perhaps even prompting a split in the Labour ranks.
It is possible that if the US goes to war against Iraq, and Israel finds itself dragged into that conflict, Labour may be moved to join an emergency government. But if all attempts to woo Labour fail, Mr Sharon will have to look elsewhere for coalition partners.
His second-best option, a grouping of centrist, Orthodox and right-wing factions, is rejected by Shinui, which says it will not sit in government with leaders of the Orthodox community it accuses of sponging off the rest of society.
This may ultimately leave Mr Sharon with little choice but to assemble a partnership including his Likud, the Orthodox factions and a far-right party, the National Union, which advocates the expansion of Israeli sovereignty into the West Bank and the "voluntary transfer" of Palestinians into other Arab countries.
Mr Sharon would face heavy pressure from such a coalition to take still firmer measures to quell the Palestinian intifada, to pump yet more money into settlement building, and to reject US-led international efforts to broker a diplomatic path to a two-state solution.
This in turn would exacerbate the already heavy tensions between Israel and the Arab world. It would put Israel at still greater odds with much of Europe. And, most importantly for the Prime Minister, it would shake the firm alliance he has established with the Bush administration.
Although the repercussions of yesterday's vote may, therefore, prove dramatic, the Israeli electorate regarded the campaign with an indifference bordering on distaste - in part because many voters resented the political manoeuvring which saw parliament dissolved ahead of schedule and prompt the fourth national elections in seven years.
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