After weeks of horse-trading, • Ariel Sharon has finally estabAlished a new coalition government in Israel, including parties representing religious settlers and proponents of forcible expulsion of all Palestinians. Although Amram Mitzna's Labour party has refused to enter the government, Israeli observers believe that, in the crisis engendered by a new war, they would find it difficult to reject the call for a "government of national unity."
The election once again confirms the absence of any serious left alternative, in the western use of the term. Although the excuse for the break-up of the previous government was economic policy, this played little part in the election.
The differences between Sharon's Likud and Mitzna's Labour were primarily about strategy for defeating Palestinian aspirations for even limited autonomy, rather than any big ideological divide.
And only terminally credulous liberals are surprised that Mitzna rapidly broke his repeated undertaking not to enter into • ••• Sharon hides from courts It is in Sharon's interests to stay in power as long as possible: he faces a war crimes tribunal in Brussels on leaving office.
The Belgian government confirmed at the end of February that, though international protocol is against prosecuting serving heads of state, Brussels intends to bring Sharon to trial for war crimes - specifically his complicit role in the Shabra-Shatila massacre in Lebanon in 1982 as soon as his premiership ends. coalition negotiations with Sharon.
The biggest loser, alongside Labour, was the allegedly left Meretz party. Meretz in fact represented the western liberal bourgeoisie. Labour and Meretz constantly repeated the mantra that "Arafat rejected Barak's generous offer at Camp David". This myth has been thoroughly discredited, notably by Hussein Agha and Robert Malley in the New York Review of Books.
Voters logically reasoned that parties which called for dialogue while maintaining that there is no one for Israel to talk to, were either lying or incompetent, and rejected these "left" parties.
Much of the Meretz vote seems to have swung to the surprise gainer in the elections, the allegedly "centrist" Shinui party. Aptly described by an Israeli observer as the redneck party, Shinui reflects the revolt of European middle-class jews against the growing influence of both rabbinical interference and the Oriental Jewish majority.
Although it does not focus on security issues, it favours continued repression in the occupied territories, and is strongly in favour of neo-liberal economics and the fuller integration of Israel into the process of capitalist globalisation.
Despite earlier promises of steadfast resistance to religious parties, Shinui is now negotiating to enter a coalition alongside the National Religious Party.
The most serious force on the genuine left was the communist-led Hadash block, which in addition to its consistent anti-occupation activity also has a creditable record of introducing progressive social legislation
• • e Israeli troops are killing an average of 4-5 Palestinians every day in the Knesset.
However, Hadash continued its gradual decline, losing a seat. For the first time since Israel was established in 1948, there is no Jewish communist in the Knesset.
It seems that many Palestinian voters turned against Hadash as a result of a growing rejection of its recognition of the results of the 1948 partition of Palestine, expressed in its call for "Two States for Two Peoples".
The level of Palestinian abstention reached a record 36%, showing an increasing rejection of the institutions of the Zionist state.
Other Palestinians turned to the Balad party led by former communist Azmi Bishara, who has long called for the transformation of Israel from "the state of the Jewish people" into "a state of its citizens".
Balad increased its representation from one to three seats, including Jamal Zahalka, who was expelled from the Communist Party after he invited Michel Warshawsky of the Revolutionary Communist League to address the party's Jerusalem youth branch on "The Legacy of Leon Trotsky".
Overall, Arab parties lost two seats, while three Arabs on the main party lists also lost their seats. Israel's 20% Palestinian population is now represented by only ten members in the 120 member Knesset.
The real concern now is that, with the ultra-nationalist National Unity and the settlers' National Religious Party in the government, Sharon will seize the opportunity of a war with Iraq to implement his long-held plan of mass expulsion of Palestinians and the transformation of Transjordan into a "Palestinian state".
Opposition in Israel will increasingly be expressed on the streets, rather than in the ever-more-extremist Knesset.