Israel is Our House (or "ישראל ביתנו')

Deeming the day of elections a better day for fun than the day after, Sara and I travelled to Haifa yesterday to have a bar-b-que with the Rubin and Kellner families. Indeed, one does not always know what to do with the day-after-election parties and many of those having day-after parties today are not those who expected to have them yesterday. Qadima, whose representative on Channel 2 claimed minutes before the polls closed that they were expecting to win all of the seats in the Knesset, fell 132 seats short of their goal. Shas, whose formal position appears to be to be bought off by anyone, is the number three party and has already been bought off by Qadima. A close fourth was a party that advertised almost exclusively in Russian and Israel's association of retired persons took as many seats as both Arab parties combined.

What will the future hold? More pullouts as Qadima and Labor bind together. Possibly fewer suicide attacks within Israel proper, but probably more Kassam and other attacks.

There is, however, a change on a larger scale that ocurred in this election. None of the leaders of the five major parties were generals or even high ranking officers in the Israeli army. If these people can put together a government, we will a see a significantly different form of regime. Whether non-military leadership will improve the country beyond what Sharon has already done remains to be seen.