So I’m pretty pleased with how the elections turned out. Olmert (who I can’t stop calling Smoelmert after the nasty Likud posters came out–he’s not really that smoel (left-wing), he did come from Likud originally after all, but it just has such a ring to it, you know?) is going to be PM, Avodah (the more mainstream left-leaning party) got a healthy second, and Likud didn’t do well at all. The religious right-wing parties did pretty well overall, but there’s still more of a left-wing than right-wing presence in the Knesset now. And a few days back Olmert said that he wan’t going to do a coalition (there’s this whole coalition-building thing that goes into forming the Israeli government) with anyone who wasn’t going to be for pulling out of the West Bank…. so. Could they really be doing it? There’ll be a lot of opposition–probably more than the Gaza withdrawl–and I’m sure the reality of what’s withdrawn, where borders are, how this looks with an uncooperative Hamas government, etc. is not going to be anybody’s idea of perfect. But Israel has to get out of the West Bank, and I’m relieved that the people in power seem to want to make that a priority.

I have a friend who almost voted for the Communist party, but switched to Kadima at the last minute. “I’m not doing this out of the love of Mordechai so much as the hatred of Haman,” he said.

We’ll see what happens now, won’t we?

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