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Israeli parliamentary elections commences today

10 February 2009 08:01 (UTC +04:00)

Tel-Aviv-APA. Israeli voters went to the polls Tuesday with public opinion polls showing many still wavering until the last minute in deciding whom to support.
Benjamin Netanyahuâ€™s conservative Likud Party has led in all the recent polls, with the centrist Kadima Party, led by Tzipi Livni, the current foreign minister, following close behind. The narrowing of the gap between them in the last few days injected a measure of energy into what had been a largely listless campaign.
For months, Israelis assumed that a victory for Mr. Netanyahu was a foregone conclusion, based on successive opinion polls. But in the final days of the campaign, the election became too close to call.
The leading candidates, Mr. Netanyahu and Ms. Livni, appealed to their natural constituencies not to waste votes on smaller, special interest parties.
Mr. Netanyahu, who had been somewhat vague on policy in the hope of attracting the widest possible support, made a pitch to the right, visiting the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Sunday and pledging not to hand the region back to Syria, from which Israel seized it in 1967.
Likud urged Israeli conservatives not to give their votes to Avigdor Liebermanâ€™s Yisrael Beitenu, a hawkish party that rose to third place in recent polls; Likud warned that every vote that did not go to Likud would only benefit Ms. Livni.
Based on similar logic, Ms. Livni, who led negotiations with the Western-backed Palestinian leadership of the West Bank over the last year, appealed to voters in the center and on the left.
Regardless of the erosion of the Likud Partyâ€™s lead, recent polls suggest that the right-wing bloc in the new Parliament is likely to be much stronger than the center-left bloc, which would make it easier for Mr. Netanyahu to form a governing coalition.
Both Mr. Netanyahu and Ms. Livni have stated a preference for a national unity government, possibly including the Labor Party, which is led by Defense Minister Ehud Barak; it had the fourth largest following in recent polls.
In all, 33 parties are running in the election, though many of them have little or no chance of passing the threshold for representation in Parliament, 2 percent of votes cast. Among them are two green parties and others fighting for the rights of divorced fathers, against organized crime, and against banksâ€™ greed.