Featured Stories. March Blog-Eds List. Background Information. There was virtually an even split between the left of center pro-withdrawal parties and the right of center anti-withdrawal parties with the left gaining 54 seats while the right gained 50 out of the Knesset seats. In the last week of the election campaign, Olmert also repeatedly declared that he would not permit any party into his government who would not accept these conditions. The more Olmert emphasized these points, the more his support fell.
Olmert might manage, by including all the left-wing parties Kadima 29 , Labor 20 , Meretz 5 and the new Pensioners party 7 to form a bare majority of 61 seats.
Further withdrawals today could further divide an already fractured electorate. Another message one can derive from these election results is that economic and domestic issues played the largest role in determining the outcome in the last 30 years, possibly greater than the issue of concessions to the Palestinian regime. The fact that the Pensioners party gained seven seats instead of the expected one, may well have been due to Netanyahu's economic policies which reduced government monies to the lower middle class Israelis.
These Netanyahu economic policies also likely dropped Likud to their surprising 12 seat result. The Labor party also ran their campaign almost entirely on economic and other domestic and labor policies, not on land concessions to Hamas.
And a leader of Kadima, Meir Shitreet, stated after the election that the issue of disengagement and unilateral withdrawals is not on the agenda.
