Though he will probably never know it. With 99% of the votes counted, Sharon's new party Kadima, under acting PM Olmert, has gained 28 seats in the Knesset (Israel's parliament). Labor got 20, and Likud, the party Sharon helped to create and, in his last great act, abandoned, received only 11. The Jerusalem Post has this analysis:
The outcome of the exit polls set up a possible center-left bloc of 60-67 seats, consisting of pro-disengagement parties Kadima 29-32, Labor 20-22, Meretz 5, and the Arab parties 6-8.
The right-wing bloc of Likud, National Union-NRP, Israel Beiteinu, Shas and United Torah Judaism won 46-52 seats (Likud 11-12; National Union-NRP 8-9; Israel Beiteinu 12-14; Shas 10-11; United Torah Judaism 5-6), not enough to keep Olmert from forming a government.
Its hard for me not to love a government in which United Torah Judaism gets at least five seats. I wonder how Divided Torah Judaism did? It is worth noting that the voters were not enthusiastic.
Voter turnout in the elections for the 17th Knesset dropped to an estimated 63.2 percent, a decrease of 5.7 percentage points compared to the previous general election in 2003. The drop on Tuesday was a continuation of the downward trend that has marked participation in elections ever since the State of Israel was created.
I think that more is going on here than historical trends. Recent Israeli elections offered voters a clear between two policies: Labor was for concessions and negotiations with the Palestinians. The alliance between Labor PM Ehud Barak and President Clinton, culminating in the Camp David Summit in 2002, represented the last best hope for this option. It failed miserably. The Likud policy was never give an inch (of the occupied territories, that is). Binyamin Netanyahu stands as the most visible spokesman for this option. Or barely manages to stand. David Horovitz in the JP has this analysis:
Ariel Sharon always claimed that his achievement in doubling the Likud's Knesset representation from 19 seats to 38 in the last Knesset was a success for what he saw as his pragmatism - the readiness for "painful compromise," the robust alliance with the Bush administration.
Binyamin Netanyahu, his colleague-rival, insisted the contrary: that the public had backed the Likud because of its traditional opposition to Palestinian statehood.
If the results of the Tuesday night TV exit polls are reflected in more final figures on Wednesday morning, then the 2006 elections are a vindication of Sharon - the stricken prime minister, the man who so conspicuously wasn't there for this campaign. Sharon, it appears, didn't merely break away from the Likud with Kadima. He broke the Likud.
And the results are a stinging rejection of Netanyahu - the politician and the ideology.
Sharon's new policy was disengagement. Let the Palestinians have their state, if they can make one. Let them have the territories. Israel cannot absorb them anyway. But forget trying to negotiate with the Palestinians.
Israel has voted for resignation, rather than for hope or steely resistance. Small wonder that the turnout was low. It is just as easy to vote for resignation by staying home.
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