Israel Voted and the Losers Are Known

That's a graphic put together by the Jersualem Post.
Labor lost out in a big way. The winners are far less certain. Kadima appears to have won 28 seats while Likud won 27 seats. Kadima is a center right party, while Likud is a right wing party. Those figures could still change as voting tallies are confirmed, but I expect this to be the final breakdown.

The far right wing Israel Beiteinu won what appears to be 15 seats. The religious party Shas won 11 seats. Labor won 13 seats. If anything, Lieberman's Israel Beiteinu party siphoned off just enough votes to keep Likud from having the plurality to overtake Kadima.

It takes 60 seats to form a government.

The media is trying to portray this as some kind of inconclusive election, but that shows a stunning lack of knowledge about the Israeli political system.

Inconclusive election results sent Israel into political limbo Wednesday with both Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and hard-line leader Benjamin Netanyahu claiming victory and leaving the kingmaker role to a rising political hawk with an anti-Arab platform.

Livni's Kadima Party won 28 seats, just one more than Netanyahu's Likud, in Tuesday's election for the 120-member parliament, according to nearly complete results. Both held victory rallies, but without a clear majority neither can govern alone. Hard-line parties won a majority of the votes, meaning that Netanyahu has more natural allies and a better chance of forming a coalition.

The results set the stage for what could be weeks of coalition negotiations. The first meetings began Wednesday, with Netanyahu meeting the head of the ultra-Orthodox Shas faction and Livni meeting Avigdor Lieberman, whose ultranationalist party received 15 seats and emerged as the third-largest force in parliament.

This is absolutely clueless drivel from the AP.

Israel always has coalition governments and they require weeks of negotiations to form the government. In fact, as each government functions, parties that make up the coalition routinely threaten to leave the coalition in order to demand and receive additional perks, concessions, from the primary party in charge.

None of this is new. A history lesson would show that Israel has required coalition governments to function since its inception in 1948. Israel's President will choose a Member of the Knesset to form the government, and deadlines are provided by statute.

What is new is that this election marked a repudiation of Labor altogether, but it showed that Kadima is still preferred despite the corruption surrounding outgoing Prime Minister Olmert and the failures of the Olmert government, including Foreign Minister Livni, to deal with the terror threat from Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza.

The qualms over Livni and Kadima appear to be least felt in the one area of Israel where the rockets and land for peace is least likely to be felt - Tel Aviv. That's where Kadima won the election. Likud won in Jerusalem and had strong showings elsewhere in the country, including in and around Israel's borders with Gaza.

UPDATE:
Carl in Jerusalem has speculation on who Bibi might choose to fill out his government. That's assuming that Israel's President Shimon Peres (formerly of Labor) chooses Netanyahu over Kadima's Livni. The US would likely put pressure on Peres to choose Livni over the right wing Netanyahu, but the ultimate decision rests with Peres, who's seen his dreams of peace shattered by the incessant war launched by the terrorists in the face of every Israeli concession, including the Gaza unilateral withdrawal. Israel's Knesset is made up of more right-leaning parties than left (via Israellycool), and they're recommending Netanyahu get first crack at forming the government.

If Bibi gets first dibs, Kadima has also lost out, although it may still end up as part of the coalition government. Any party trying to cobble together a coalition government must arrive at the magic number of 60 to govern. Let the games begin.

Israelis Go To Polls; Hamas Continues Consolidating Grip on Gaza

Israelis are going to the polls today in large numbers, and it is likely that the new Knesset will move substantially to the right, with Labor losing out big, slipping to fourth in size for the first time in the party's history. It's a tossup between Likud, Yisrael Beiteinu, and Kadima, and it is similarly a tossup between Binyamin Netanyahu, Avigdor Lieberman, and Tzipi Livni. Israellycool is liveblogging the elections.

Meanwhile, Hamas is busy consolidating its grip on Gaza, killing collaborators and anyone who might pose a threat to Hamas' continued hold on power.

The human rights group said in a report that at least two dozen men have been shot dead by gunmen from the Palestinian militia that governs the Gaza Strip since December 27.

"Scores of others have been shot in the legs, knee-capped or inflicted with other injuries intended to cause severe disability, subjected to severe beatings ... or otherwise tortured or ill-treated," it added.

"Hamas forces and militias in the Gaza Strip have engaged in a campaign of abductions, deliberate and unlawful killings, torture and death threats against those they accuse of 'collaborating' with Israel, as well as opponents and critics," the report said.

The victims included members of Palestinian Authority security forces and members of Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas' Fatah party, Amnesty said.

The campaign began shortly after the beginning of the three-week Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip on December 27 and continued after the ceasefire on January 18, according to Amnesty.

I've been reporting on such extrajudicial killings and the shooting of collaborators for weeks, which included the hospital incidents where Hamas would go through hospital wards murdering and kneecapping those people they believed were collaborators.

Yet the world expects Israel to make deals with Hamas? Hamas has no interest in peace with Israel, and the outcome of the Israeli elections will reflect the fact that the center-left has failed to protect Israel through negotiations and diplomacy with Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. Kadima has likewise failed, but that doesn't mean that the far right Israel Beitinu is any better; its policies border on the fascist in demanding loyalty oaths and of course the Arab media is busy portraying the outcome as being even more extreme than it will be.

Israel is responding to the incessant attacks and the Hamas war on Israel that has been unabated for years, and despite the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. Hamas has used the withdrawal from Gaza to consolidate its grip on power and now uses Gaza to fire rockets deeper into Israel. It was Kadima's failures to deal with the rocket - by ignoring the attacks until they were so numerous and the Israeli casualties started piling up that they no longer could be ignored. Israel's restraint was seen as weakness by Hamas and they fired rockets.

Hamas still attacks, even during the so-called "truce," which is really nothing more than a hudna to allow Hamas to regroup and resupply. The end of Operation Cast Lead was not due to a military decision, but a political one. It meant that the military gains against Hamas - destroying Hamas leadership, weapons caches, and smuggling tunnels stopped short of dealing Hamas a fatal blow. It has allowed Hamas to declare victory amid the ruins of its buildings. Livni and outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert deserve the blame for this situation, which follows their disastrous handling of the Hizbullah war in 2006. It is a pattern of indecisiveness and a failure to see the military campaign through to victory. Instead, the Israeli political class appears willing to settle for a stalemate, which only serves to benefit the terrorists and their terror masters.

UPDATE:
Carl in Jerusalem points out that the Arab media portrays any Israeli party that doesn't accept Arab right of return to Israeli territory extremist. Considering that all the Israeli parties, including the dovish-far left Meretz doesn't accept the right of return, it pretty much guarantees that all parties would be accused of being right-wingers.