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ISRAELIS ARE TRICKLING into polling stations this morning to vote in elections expected to return Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to power at the head of a government of hardline right wing and religious parties.
A handful of voters were already queuing up as stations opened at 0500 GMT, waiting to mark their ballots in blue voting booths, though many Israelis were taking advantage of the election day public holiday to sleep in.
Netanyahu was out early, casting his ballot with his wife Sara and their two sons at a polling station in the upscale Rehavia neighbourhood of Jerusalem, where the prime minister’s official residence is located.
The prime minister, after casting his ballot said he hoped for “a flood of votes” for his rightwing joint Likud-Beitenu bloc, Israeli media reported.
Also among those out early in the unseasonably warm weather was Joe Jamal, 55, voting in the central Jerusalem neighbourhood of Katamon.
“I don’t expect much change. I’m still hoping for an alternative, a move to the centre, for which I’m voting,” Jamal, a doctor, told AFP.
His expectations track polling ahead of the vote, which has consistently projected an easy win for the joint list of Netanyahu’s Likud faction and the secular nationalist Yisrael Beitenu of former foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right, and former Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman speak during a Likud-Yisrael Beitenu campaign rally last week. The pair are expected to lead a coalition after the elections. Pic: AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov.
The prime minister is expected to preside over a sharply rightwing government that is considered less likely to achieve a comprehensive peace deal with the Palestinians and could increase Israel’s diplomatic isolation.
The government will face key diplomatic and foreign policy questions, including Iran’s nuclear programme, which much of the world believes masks a weapons drive, and a Middle East profoundly changed by the Arab uprisings.
But domestic challenges will be no less pressing, with a major budget crisis and austerity cuts on the horizon, even as Israelis express widespread discontent over spiralling prices.
The joint Likud-Beitenu list may be confident of leading those competing for the Knesset’s 120 seats, but polls show that the two parties will lose around 10 of the seats they hold now, garnering around 32 seats in total.
The centre-left Labour party is projected to trail in second place with around 17 seats. Its chief, Shelly Yachimovich, is expected to become leader of the opposition after pledging she would not join a Netanyahu government.
The campaign’s big surprise has been Naftali Bennett, the young, charismatic new leader of the hardline national religious Jewish Home. He took over the party in November and has quickly become a rising star among settlers.
Naftali Bennett, head of Israel’s Jewish Home party, left, waves to a crowd as he leaves a polling station after voting in Raanana earlier today. Pic: AP Photo/Ariel Schalit.
The party, which firmly opposes a Palestinian state and won just three seats in 2009, is on course to win 15, making it the third faction in parliament and a likely partner in any future coalition government.
Bennett’s success has rattled Netanyahu, pundits say, with the premier pushing to stem the defection of voters to Jewish Home by burnishing his own credentials as a defender of Israeli settlement in the occupied territories.
Overall, according to final polls, the rightwing-religious bloc will take between 61 and 67 seats, compared with 53 to 57 for the centre-left and Arab parties.
Some 5.65 million Israelis are eligible to vote in today’s parliamentary elections, including Arab citizens of the Jewish state, who are expected to stay away from the polls in record numbers.
Voters will be able to cast ballots at 10,132 polling stations, which are open for 15 hours, with television exit polls due to be broadcast immediately after they close.
Security has been tightened across the country and more than 20,000 police officers have been deployed to secure the vote.
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This report seems to indicate that victims of trafficking have an automatic entitlement to asylum ?…would these women, mainly, not want to return to their home countries?
@winston smith: to be fair, they could be from cultures where their families would disown them for the shame of being trafficked. At the same time, would you want to return to a country where you had been captured and sold from once already knowing that it isn’t safe and could easily happen again?
@Jeffrey McMahon: So what about hundreds of millions of other women in these cultures where they can be captured and sold ?? Shouldn’t we offer all of them free asylum here? Or you like to help only the ones who got already delivered ???
a@winston smith: It is big business in some countries, to take a fellow citizen and exploit them to a deprave level and we are supposed to open our doors to everyone who practices any and all crimes against vulnerable non Irish people. If they don’t know what traps they are how do they know who to turn to when they get targeted. The ICI have never said a good word about Ireland or its services, just a stream of what we are not doing or what we are doing wrong. Never a mention about what Irish people have to go without in their own country as regard to services. This crowd are actively recruiting more migrants to bring here which is not why they are well funded by our government.
IF YOU have been processed ,and refused asylum , go home .
It’s pretty sad really. There are real victims of trafficking in Ireland who probably just want to go home but instead get mixed up in the legal bureaucracy that’s involved in direct provision. If the ICI stopped supporting economic migrants with false stories of persecution then maybe they could spend more time getting these victims home instead of lumping them in with a bunch of chancers.
Yes,I thought Ireland had at best an indifferent approach to Asylum seekers ,this report is an indictment of a policy of wilful neglect .
o policy to dehumanise ,a refusal by the State to harbour those victims of violence in a safe place ,strip them of dignity so they voluntarily leave,Not surprising ,seeing what we have as a Society, perpetrated on our own people ,and our continuing policy of inaction in not building affordable Social Housing but handing it over to a bunch of vulture developers,
Ireland should do its duty to these people,
@Brian O Reilly: ,as has already be en pointed out why dont they want to return to there own families ,its another way to try and stay in this country. have u been to dublin recently?
@ian kennedy: are you saying they are deliberately getting themselves taken or that they are lying? It’s hard to tell.
@Dave O Keeffe: lying
@Brian O Reilly: Brian while there are undoubtedly cases of trafficking it is also possible for people to claim they were trafficked as a way of seeking an advantage in the asylum process. I note that the spokesperson says that these cases are the “tip of the iceberg”. Is this so or is this simply wild hyperbole? Where is the proof?
Direct provision is not the culprit here. DP has nothing to do with the legal asylum process. It is a way of providing accommodation and related supports such as medical cards for asylum seekers who have no accommodation or means. The alternative is homelessness. Finally, processing most asylum claims takes time.
If additional supports are to be provided to alleged trafficking victims then the HSE should provide them. Not the Dept of Justice.
The vast majority of problems arose between the late 1990′s and circa 2005 when massive numbers of trafficked people were arriving here. People in the dept. were making a fortune out of them, as were the legal profession. No one wanted to know. No one gave a damn, in fact.
The IOC lol
have your say