ho
Really

on?

Jubilation and alienation
in post-election Israel.

INA FRIEDMAN ISRAEL CORRESPONDENT

Jerusalem

or the record, Labor's Shimon Peres lost the election by
29,457 votes — a mere nine-tenths of 1 percent. At the same
time, some 200,000 people who voted for the right-wing, re-
ligious, or special-interest parties that will make up
Binyamin "Bibi" Netanyahu's coalition cast their vote for
Mr. Peres.
And that is but one paradox to ponder.
The professional pollsters — who consistently had Mr.
Peres in a tight lead — attributed their faulty forecast to a general under-
representation of right-wing and religious voters in their samples.
And now it is assumed that many voters deliberately misled the pollsters.
"It wasn't 'bon ton' to say they were voting for [Binyamin] Netanyahu," Likud
campaign propaganda chief Limor Livnat explained in a radio interview, "so
they simply lied."
Another interesting phenomenon was the considerable difference (of 81,080
votes) between the number of disqualified votes for the Knesset and for the
prime ministership. That is ascribed to tens of thousands of voters placing a
blank slip into their envelope in voting for prime minister. Many of these
came from the Arab sector, on which Mr. Peres was so dependent.
The central elections commission disregarded those ballots. Three appeals
have been lodged with the High Court of Justice to overturn that decision, but
it is highly unlikely that those pleas will be successful.

FIRST MOVES

During the campaign, Bibi the hawk became Bibi the chameleon, playing to
the political center and then to the even smaller group of "floating voters."
Who he becomes now, no one is sure.
Since the election, various Likud leaders have stated that their govern-
ment must never redeploy Israeli troops
Opposite page,far left:
in Hebron, reopen and renegotiate the
Israelis were drawn to the site of Prime
Minister Yitzhak Rabin's assassination-
Oslo Accords and that it must close Ori
a parking lot near Rabin Square in Tel
ent House (the Palestinian headquar
Aviv.
ters in East Jerusalem).
Mr. Netanyahu himself has remained
Left: Likud supporters were in a
celebratory mood last Thursday while
mute. Even in his victory speech before
awaiting election returns in Tel Aviv.
5.000 ecstatic Likud supporters on Sun-

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