Israel held elections in the aftermath of Ariel Sharon’s continued comatose state and Ehud Olmert’s assumption of leadership of the new center party, Kadima.

*Read the experience of one Israeli poll worker, the writer Judy Balint, here.

With the ballot counting mostly done, it seems that Kadima has won, and will have the first right to form a coaltion (see a pre-election analysis of the electoral map done by my GnB blog-partner Don Radlauer here).

With 99.5 percent of the vote counted, Kadima had a less than expected 28 seats. Labor held at 20 seats, and Shas rose to 13, making the Sephardi ultra-Orthodox party the third largest faction in the Knesset.

As of Wednesday morning, election observers had yet to count the votes of Israel Defense Forces soldiers, Israeli diplomats abroad, hospitalized patients, incarcerated citizens and Israeli mariners. Their votes could alter the final results slightly.

The Likud had hoped to block a center-left coalition, but with almost all of the votes in weakened to 11 seats, far below the figures the party had hoped and a far cry from the 38 seats it won under Ariel Sharon in 2003.

Avigdor Lieberman’s Russian immigrant-dominated faction Yisrael Beiteinu captured 12 seats, positioning itself as the chief opposition party to head the nationalist camp.

In the largest surprise of the night, the Pensioners’ Party won seven seats. The right-wing National Union-National Religious Party secured nine seats, with United Torah Judaism at six and Meretz at four. The Arab parties won a total of ten seats.

Exit polls released as polling stations closed at 10 P.M. Tuesday showed center-left parties gaining a total of between 62 and 66 seats, with Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s Kadima winning 29 to 32 seats, Labor 20-22 seats, Meretz five and the Arab parties seven to eight seats.

Thus, Israelis, if hesitantly, have again given mandate to Sharon’s vision of unilateral withdrawal from the Occupied Territories (especially the West Bank) with or without a Palestinian peace partner.

And just what about that erstwhile partner? The terrorist group Hamas is now assuming the control of the PA government.

Hamas’ new cabinet ministers started moving into their offices Thursday, as Western nations began following through on their threats to cut off aid to the Palestinian government if the militant group does not moderate.

Hamas, which won a majority of parliament seats in the January 25 elections, has refused to renounce violence, recognize Israel and accept previous agreements between Israel and the Palestinians.

The United States and European Union list Hamas as a terror group.

One should take some consolation, of course, that the oft-repeated notion of a Hamas landslide in the last election is a myth (see also here). If anything, what we ought to learn is what I call “the Lesson of Kwangju.“:

Some regional experts say that allowing “democracy” (or at least some semblance of popular election) will lead to empowering Islamists and thus create an unwelcome unintended consequence. That is not necessarily true. Such an outcome is a result of the U.S. and the West tacitly supporting non-Islamist “allied regimes” that are dictatorial and corrupt, leaving Islamists as the only “viable” electoral choice…

Indeed, if we could foster a clean, secular-democratic alternative, even at the expense of termporary diplomatic disadvantages, then the equation of “free elections = Islamist victory” in the Middle East would no longer hold. On the other hand, if we are to heed the advice of “paleo-cons” and continue to support nominally secular, anti-Islamist, but oppressive “allies” (”Who cares what they do to their own people? They are incapable of democracy anyway”) we will live the self-fulfilling prophesy of that equation, again and again.

[Cross-posted in Guns and Butter Blog]