Tuesday night, as the polls closed in Israel, Nachman Shai, former IDF spokesman and number 18 on the Kadima list for this Knesset election, told CNN that Tzipi Livni was the best choice for prime minister because she could attack Gaza and, immediately afterwards, talk peace. That needed courage and determination: courage to take risks, determination to not compromise on ends. In an article in The Jerusalem Post a day before the election, Shai, making Kadima’s case, used the logic of his own conversion from political indifference to involvement: this would be an election about security as much as demography. Long opposed to the idea of a Palestinian state, Shai warmed up to it realising that without disengagement and two states, demography would overwhelm Israel, making Jews the minority arbiters of an Arab majority’s destiny. The dream of greater Israel needed to be

abandoned to keep Israel democratic and Jewish.

Shai’s journey is one that many Israelis have taken since the Oslo Accords, and made again after the Second Intifada began. The key sentiment resonating through the campaign was “Enough!” Security, apparently, would determine the results. An exhausted Israel can’t bear its fear-psychosis any more. We’d heard that before, but there was indeed the sense of a cataclysmic departure this time. Israel has drifted rightward, proportionately: the centre-right to the far right, the centre to the right, the centre-left to the centre, ad infinitum.

Likud had comfortably led the opinion polls for a month, and then, Kadima suddenly began closing the gap with a week to go, neutralising it with a day to go and then emerging as the largest party, a seat ahead of Likud, when 99 per cent votes had been counted. Was this a sudden waking up to calls such as Shai’s or an epiphany about Livni’s capability? If fear had pushed the electorate to Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman, it was another fear — that of the Right itself — that brought most of the rest of the vote to centrist Kadima, leftist as well as Arab votes. This was negative voting to stop Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu. On the other hand, Likud slipped because so many rightist votes went to Lieberman. Kadima, in the end, edged past Likud because of causes outside itself. But the rightist bloc in the new Knesset is projected to be bigger than the leftist bloc and Netanyahu may still be PM. That’s why both Livni and Netanyahu have claimed victory. Livni is untested as PM, Netanyahu and Barak have been there before, and disappointed.

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