Posted on 02/11/2009 3:13:50 AM PST by SkyPilot
JERUSALEM (AP) - Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and hard-line rival Benjamin Netanyahu both claimed victory Tuesday in Israel's parliamentary election but official results suggested the race was too close to call.
Right-wing parties - including Netanyahu's Likud Party - appear to have won a clear majority of 64 seats in the 120-seat parliament, which would give Netanyahu the upper hand in forming the next government.
However, with more than two-thirds of the votes counted, Livni's centrist Kadima Party had 29 seats, while Likud had 28. Those results could change by a seat or two when soldiers' votes are tallied Thursday evening.
The winner of the election wasn't clear in part because Livni could try to form a coalition with hawkish parties. It appeared one ultranationalist candidate, Avigdor Lieberman, could single-handedly determine the country's next leader with his decision of whom to join.
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(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.myway.com ...
When the Left cannot steal an election (see: ACORN), they demand power anyway.
This is from the Jerusalem Post:
Parties dismiss PM rotation as coalition talks set to begin
Bibi won, and the Labor party lost to such an extent that it only gained 13 mandates and finished forth, yet they want a "rotating Prime Minister."
Ping.
good morning and ping.
Go Bibi go
(The official results also confirmed that Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beitenu with its 15 mandates has ousted Labor as the third-largest political party, while Labor under Defense Minister Ehud Barak only managed to scrape 13 mandates. Shas has preserved its power, holding on to its 11 seats and United Torah Judaism received 5 mandates. Hadash, United Arab List – Ta'al and the National Union won 4 mandates while Meretz, Habayit Hayehudi and Balad received 3.)
Typical. Leftists everywhere learned from Al Gore and, while he did not get himself appointed co-president, the Dems convinced Bush to pressure GOP congress critters to permit various legislative restructurings that essentially resulted in power-sharing even though the Dems were, at that point, a minority.
And of course there’s the example of Kenya, where the left (whose leader is Barry Obama’s cousin, Raila Odinga) led such a campaign of rioting and violence that the country’s Supreme Court essentially appointed the loser, Odinga, as “co president,” and now he’s really the one who runs the country.
The strategy works.
If the Israelis elect left wing losers, they deserve what they get. Kind of like the US electing this spoiled little brat President.
I am guessing that when they say they want a “rotating Prime Minister.” What they are really saying is that they want a PM who will ‘sit and spin’.
How is it that the liberal party is “centrist” and the conservative party is “hardline right-wing?”
Kind of like the description of the 3 RINOS and Ben Nelson as “three moderate Republicans and a conservative Democrat” instead of 3 liberal Republcians and moderate Democrat.
I wonder if this Israel Beitanu (sp) took votes away from the Likud?
These descriptions are manifestly disinformation (simply intended as insults), and anyone relying on these descriptions is going to be confused and ultimately disappointed when these characters don't come close to acting in any such way!
yes this happened. Kadima stole from Labor.
Right/Left breakdown. They also have red state/blue state dynamic going on. http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1233304750355&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
My guess is that they will try to ram a Leftist coalition together prior to all of the military votes coming in.
Different book cover samd old story. Just a hunch.
Cmon Netanyahu.
Conservatism is on the march everywhere but here. Course we haven’t tried running a Conservative candidate. The self hating RNC won’t allow that.
Pray for America, Our Troops and obama’s Guidance
If you'd like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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Correction Break up of Kadima over principles could make national camp coalition of at least 74 Both parties claim victory and race to form rival coalitions
Dr. Aaron Lerner - IMRA: According to the Walla.co.il Hebrew website
With all but 29 regular ballot boxes counted (including 28 boxes with errors in count that have yet to be resolved) Kadima 28, Likud 27, Israel Beiteinu 15, Labor 13, Shas 11, United Arab List 4, United Torah Judaism 5, National Union 4, Hadash 4, Meretz 3, Bayit Hayihudi 3, and Balad 3 seats.
It should be noted that this count is before the count of the votes from soldiers and emissaries abroad and the allocation of unallocated seats (the accumulation of fractional seats). While Kadima has an agreement to share fractional seats with a party that did not get enough votes to be in the Knesset and thus the votes of the partner are lost, Likud partnered with Israel Beiteinu and Bayit Hayihudi with National Union..
Should Netanyahu start the process of forming his coalition with the 65 in the national camp on the basis of the promises he made to his constituents to get elected (no withdrawal from Golan, not dividing Jerusalem, etc.) and then offers Livni for Kadima to join under these principles, Livni will reject the offer but at least a third of Kadima - which supports these positions anyway - would have no problem splitting off from Kadima to join the coalition.
Under this scenario, Netanyahu would have a national camp coalition of at least 74 seats. ].
Give those leftist idiots something to rotate on..
American Pravda never misses a chance to slip leftist agitprop into its "news" articles. In the lead graphs, note the descriptions of Netanyahu as "hard-line" and his party as "right-wing." By contrast, Livni's party is "centrist," and she is never referred to as a leftist or socialist.
Odd, isn't it, how the "right wing" parties won a majority of the votes over the "centrist" ones? Simple math dicatates that if anything, the conservative parties must actually be a shade more "centrist" than their rivals.
For the socialists at AP, there are just two types of parties: extremist right-wing hardliners and moderates.
I looked at your graphic and lifted my cup of coffee in toast to the brilliance of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America, who set the foundation for OUR government, even as screwed up as it is.
The bottom tier of 6 parties control 21 seats, possibly causing a government to “fall” and to otherwise create chaos in the country. This HAS happened in Italy, France, and even to a less extent in England.
Imagine the USA with a similar set-up. There would be the ABORTION party,the PRO LIFE PARTY, the OWN-A-GUN party, the DISARMAMENT PARTY, the NUCLEAR POWER party, the WIND POWER party, the BURN COAL party, the ANTI_COAL party, a 83 other political groups, each clinging to its own miniscule piece of the pie.
Yes, we have our own mess, but I like our mess better.
What I found interesting was an article in the Jerusalem Post that broke down how the different areas of Israel voted.
Jerusalem’s voters leaned decidedly to the Right while Tel Aviv’s seemed to like Kadima and Labor
Those areas close to Gaza voted strongly for Likud and Israel Beitienu.
I didn’t see anything in the article about how Haifa voted. But given it’s a port city, I suspect that Labor and Kadima did well there.
The founding fathers had nothing to do with our current political party structure and in fact, decried political parties. Our current 2-party system is more of a result of us having a presidential system rather than the system being designed for having two parties. If there are party factions, a president can easily override a factioned out party’s pull.
Come on, Bibi!
Interesting how news came right out and said the O’bozo administration would strongly prefer that Livni and Kadima win.
Bibi does not have a majority, and the broad has even less of one. This is a PARLIAMENT (read "Parliament of Whores"). Those "other right-wing parties" everyone is so blythely assured will vote with Bibi, are about as reliable as a Renault in the rain.
They sell their support to the highest bidder and it's never cheap.
While I agree our political system is better, at least with the Israeli political system the likes of shifty Tzipo Livni may no be able to form a viable, working coalition, due to the lesser Orthodox parties {hopefully} being more in tune with conservative Likud.
The following information should clear things up a bit:
'Israeli Political System and Parties - Israel has the most democratic government in the Middle East. All citizens over the age of 18, regardless of sex, religion or ethnic group can vote and serve in the government. Jews, Arabs and Druze all serve as members of the Knesset, and one (Ghaleb Majadle)has served as a minister in the outgoing (2008) government. To date, no Arab party has served in any coalition government. Racist parties or parties that strive to subvert or overthrow the state are outlawed.
Israel does not have a constitution, but it does have a number of basic laws that govern how the government is structured, rights of individuals and similar matters. Attempts to create a constitution have been blocked by religious parties, who do not want to formalize separation of religion and state.
Israel has a parliamentary democracy system with partial separation of powers between the judicial branch on the one hand, and the legislative and executive branches on the other. The President is largely a ceremonial figurehead. The post was probably created in part by David Ben-Gurion to honor Chaim Weizmann (see Presidents of Israel). The President is elected by the Knesset.
120 members of the Knesset (parliament) are elected in nation-wide elections from party lists. The head of the party that has the best chance of forming a coalition (usually, but not necessarily the party with the largest number of mandates) is then chosen by the President to attempt to form a government. Since no party has ever won a majority, a coalition must be formed.
The Israeli system is not like the British system, in which members are elected from districts. Rather, it is like the French Fourth Republic system. The members are chosen from party lists, and are elected in proportion to the number of votes received by the party, according to the predetermined order of candidates that was presented to the elections commission. As a result, the members are not beholden to a particular constituency and some of the back-bench members of larger lists are virtual unknowns. In theory, this produces a system based on ideologies represented in the party platforms.
In the early years of the state this resulted in the formation of numerous small lists. The law has been amended repeatedly to raise the minimum percentage required for a party to enter the Knesset. According to the latest revision (Bader-Ofer Law), a party that receives less than 2% of the vote gets no representation at all, and its votes are "lost" - they are distributed proportionately. Excess vote of different parties that passed the minimum may be traded according to prior agreement.
A peculiarity of the system is that even though members are elected to lists, the mandate belongs to the individual. Individuals or groups may split off from the main party taking their mandates with them. Often they do leave to form new lists and one person "factions," resulting in a bewildering array of tiny "parties" that usually exist for one Knesset session only. Individuals or groups that leave with the intention of forcing a change in their party often form "lists" rather than parties, indicating that the ideological platform is the same as that of the original party, but the personnel are different. Such lists (reshimot) usually last for one or two elections. The Rafi list of David Ben-Gurion was one such party.'
Source: Source, more data & with multiple links.
Onward to a Likud victory for the survival of Eretz Yisrael.
The Israeli "Right Wing" is code for patriotic socialist. The Israeli "Left Wing" does not differ greatly on economics, except that they want to join hands (occasionally and publicly) with Muslims and sing "Coom-by-AH" while trading "land for peace."
Thanks for posting this great political pie breakdown. Let us hope for the best!
The bottom line of the graph looks like FRee Republic and the hard core my way or the highway niche conservatives earlier this year.
From your keyboard to God’s eyes. (With respect)
Great news. This is from the National Review on this subject:
An overwhelming number of Israelis voted to place security over a two state peace process. The Right has the clearest majority since Menachim Begin became PM. Forming a coalition on the same security principles (the number one issue in this campaign) will be relatively easy. Benjamin Netanyahu will be the next PM. He will probably ask Kadima and Labor to join but needs neither.(Even Israel's Left leaning media concedes that Netanyahu is in the drivers seat. By the way the Likud Party grew more than any other - doubling in size)I just learned that less than 30,000 votes separate Kadima from Likud and that there are 200,000 military ballots being counted and they always break Right. But no matter what the final vote total the next government will be Right wing and its number one objective will be to stop Iran from attaining nuclear weapons. link
Thank you very much for those kind words.
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