So, these most miserable elections ended as expected. What would have seemed an implausible nightmare but a few months ago is now a sober reality: Ariel Sharon has been elected Prime Minister of Israel.
Still, this result is not so much the victory of a notorious hard-liner as it is the defeat of the failing incumbent. Barak, the man who spoke peace but went to war, was not so much defeated by the opposition as by himself. As no leader of the right could possibly have done, it was…