The World

I am beginning to have religious doubts. For the first time in my life, it has occurred to me that maybe the ultra-Orthodox Jews really do have a direct line to the Lord. There is a group living here in Jerusalem who regard the Israeli state as an abomination because it has been formed before the return of the Messiah. They had called upon God to signal his disapproval of Israel by smiting Tuesday’s elections with storms. And lo, it came to pass. The weather on election day was filthy: torrential rain, gale-force winds, even hail at one point. The winds were so powerful that they blew my new light-weight glasses off my face and they disappeared somewhere. So I am typing this blind. God knows what words are coming out on the screen.

Despite the weather, the elections went ahead. The exit polls suggest that Livni and Kadima will be the largest party, closely followed by Likud, with the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu and “Yvette” Lieberman beating Labour into fourth place. So Livni would get first shot at forming a government, but might not be able to secure a majority.

The likeliest scenarios in descending order seem to be: 1) A Likud-led government led by Netanyahu and dependent on votes from Lieberman and the religious parties. The snag is that the religious parties loath the pork-eating Liebermanites – and may call down a thunderstorm on them. 2) A Livni-Lieberman-Labour coalition – but this is an uneasy ideological coalition. 3) A grand coalition bringing together Kadima, Likud and Labour. All of these options seem pretty unstable, so Israel may well have elections again quite soon. This, after all, is their fifth election inside ten years.

Earlier on election day, I had lunch with some relatives. They had all cast their usual vote for the Communist Party – the only Knesset party that has both Arab and Jewish MPs. But somehow I don’t see the Commies making it into the next governing coalition.