In the immediate aftermath of his party’s devastating defeat, Mitzna reiterated his intention of remaining out of a coalition, noting that Sharon’s hope was that “the Labour Party will once more serve as a fig leaf for his failing policy.” However, there is every chance that within a short space of time Labour could be back in government with Likud, with or without Mitzna.

In his victory speech Sharon said, “It is time to come together,” and continued, “I am announcing today, that after the president assigns me the task of forming a government, I will ask all Zionist parties to join a unity government that will be as broad as possible.”

His reference to the “Zionist parties” was especially directed at Labour. Since the foundation of the state of Israel, Labour has been central to the Zionist project, giving a democratic and even socialist colouration to what was always a fundamentally reactionary programme.

Labour’s electoral collapse is part of the wider crisis of the Israeli state, which finds itself at an historic impasse. It is no longer possible to reconcile Zionism, which is based on religious exclusivism and the forcible oppression of the Palestinians, with the maintenance of bourgeois democratic forms of rule.