7:00 pm Update

The last meeting is taking place at Beit HaNassi (House of the President), or perhaps is finished. This final meeting was with United Torah Judaism which already signed an agreement with Bibi Netanyahu.

Ichud Leumi endorsed Likud this afternoon, and all three Arab parties abstained, that is they recommended no one. So, with UTJ's recommendation for Likud, the Netanyahu led party will garner the 65 seats projected for them, with Kadima at only 28.

This parallels exactly what the voters wanted, and no matter how Tzipi Livni tries to say the people elected her, not Bibi, it just doesn't line up with the reality of the vote.

Livni continues to state that she will not sit in a Netanyahu led government, and will head to the opposition, joining Labor, Meretz, and the three Arab parties.

Nonetheless, Peres continues to state that he will invite BOTH Netanyahu and Livni to Beit HaNassi tomorrow, presumably to discuss a unity government and to try to persuade both parties to join together.

Quite frankly, this is very annoying, and since the President has the final say to do (unilaterally) whatever he wants, he COULD bypass the will of people and recommend Livni. He could, but I don't think he will. Of course, should he do that, there would be enormous public uproar, AND she can't put together a coalition anyway, so it would fall back to Bibi in the end. It would simply waste precious time and leave the three stooges in limbo power for another couple of months. omg. Let's hope Peres will heed Livni's objection to joining a unity government, and simply hand the request over to Bibi as he should.

I need to remind the readers however, that it's not over yet. !! Now, comes the task of actually putting together the coalition. There will be demands and expectations, and a lot of hammering out of details. There will be budget expectations from each of the parties for certain ministries and programs, and all this will take a while.

Then once the coalition is in place, the budget has to be passed by the whole Knesset, which, remember, will include the opposition. Hmmm. Can you see some dilemmas rising up?

Tomorrow I will briefly discuss the power or lack of power that the opposition parties have and what it means for a government here in Israel when the entire sitting government is right wing, and an entire strong opposition is left wing.

For now, let's wait for Peres to give Bibi the nod...hopefully tomorrow, before Shabbat.