If you'd like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
----------------------------
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. ].
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