Israel’s Orthodox parties and Natan Sharansky’s immigrant-rights list looked to be the only certain winners in this week’s national elections in Israel.
The critical race for prime minister between Simon Peres and Benjamin Netanyahu was too close to call as the election count see-sawed throught Wednesdays night.
Which man will become prime minister may not be known until the weekend, when the final tally of the soldier’s vote is known.
But whoever wins in the race that was seen as a referendum on the peace process will have to pull together a large number of parties in order to secure a viable majority in the Knesset.
It remains to be seen whether a government forged with the support of a smaller parties will be workable and stable over the long term.
The real winners appeared to be the Orthodox parties, which combined scored a stunning 22 seats, up from 16 in the outgoing Knesset.
Sharansky’s Yisrael Ba’Aliyah party won a predicted seven seats.
In contrast, both Labour and Likud lost a large number of the seats they held in the outgoing Knesset to the smaller parties.
If Netanyahu proves victorious, his coalition would probably include all three Orthodox parties: the National Religious Party as well as the fervently Orthodox Parties, Shas and United Torah Judaism.
It would also likely include Yisrael Ba’Aliyah, the Third Way and possibly the ultrarightist Moledet.
The Third Way, under Avigdor Kahalani, had three seats predicted, as did Moledet.
If Peres emerges as the winner, his coalition would likely include at least two Orthodox parties alongside the secularist Meretz and the Arab lists.
But Peres would also likely in his coalition Yisrael Ba’Aliyah and the Third Way.
As the television predictions seesawed between the two prime ministerial candidates, politicians on both sides were to be beard questioning the efficacy of the new electrol system.
The system, by permitting Israelis to split their vote for the first time in separate ballots for prime minister and the Knesset, has clearly produced a proliferation of middle-sized parties while whittling down the strength of the two major parties.
Some see this as a step toward the evolution of an Italian-style, multiparty structure with all its inherent instability.
The Othodox parties, which have often played the role of kingmaker in the coalition-building process, appear to wield even greater power this time around.
With a third of the votes counted, the Shas Party was proven to be a major success of the, having appeared to have captured nine or 10 seats, compared to six in the outgoing Knesset.
The National Religious Party, made up primarily of religious Zionists, also appeared to have increased its share of the vote, from six seats in the outgoing Knesset to have increased its share of the vote, from six seats in the outgoing Knesset to nine seats in the new one.
The third Orthodox Party, United Torah Judaism – which includes Agudat Yisrael and Degel HaTorah – retained its four seats.
Moledet is also a largely Orthodox-supported party: Its No. 2 man is Rabbi Benny Elon, a prominent settler leader and yeshiva head.
One of the most significant aspects of the preliminary results, in the view of political observers, is the severe trouncing that was meted out to the Likud and its rightist allies.
Likud decreased its power from 40 to 31 seats, which is particularly significant since Likud combined with the Tsomet Party of Rafael Eitan, which in 1992 scored eight seats of its own.
In the outgoing Knesset, Likud, Tsomet and Moledet together held 51 seats. The National Religious Party, with another six, firmly allied itself with the right.
In the new Knesset, Likud-Tsomet and Moledet account for merely 34 seats – and the NRP has made it clear that it is open to offers from Peres.
However, more than a few Labor Party officials foresaw the possibility earlier in the week of Peres losing.
Indeed, a sense of gloom and doom had deepened in the Labor Party camp as the week progressed.
The opinion polls published daily in the runup to the vote showed a steady and ominous shrinkage of the 4 percent to 6 percent lead that Peres had held over Netanyahu during April and much of May.
The turning point in the campaign seemed to occur Sunday, when Peres came off worse in a televised debate than the debonair and articulate Netanyahu.
Peres looked haggard and sounded vague in the debate, compared with the polished television performance turned in by his rival.
The next morning, Rabbi Eliezer Shach and a number of leading Chasidic rabbis endorsed Netanyahu.
This immediately sent thousands of fervently Orthodox yeshiva students into the streets, and many towns quickly took on an aspect of vigorous and high-profile campaigning for the Likud leader.
Increasingly, as the week wore on, Peres seemed to slip in the public standing, with the gap steadily and ominously narrowing.
Lubavitch Chasidim mounted a vigorous campaign in the days just before Wednesday’s voting, telling the electorate from thousands of billboards and hundreds of thousands of fliers that Netanyahu was “Good for the Jews”
Labor campaign managers hoped that this message, plainly directed against the Arab voters, would boomerang.
Peres, meanwhile, had clearly banked on the support of the support of the Arabs to boost his prospects.
The Arabs gave Peres and his party campaign managers much to worry about during election day.
Their turnout figures for much of the day were lower than the Labor Party had hoped for.
Peres and Meretz leader Yossi Sarid looked alarmed mid-afternoon as the voting figures were reported.
But by the evening, the Arab voters came to the polling stations in droves.
Labor and Arab party activists succeeded in busing and driving tens of thousands of late voters to the voting booths, signaling a potentially higher Arab turnout than ever before.
For their part, some of the Arab parties did well, according to preliminary figures.
Hadash went from three to four seats in the new Knesset and the Arab Democratic Party-United Arab List won three.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
