Well, it’s complicated.

First of all, we wait. We have already woken up to a slightly different situation. The exit polls were slightly slanted towards the left, as usual. Kadima has 28 seats while Likud has 27. Lieberman 15, Shas got 11 and poor Meretz is down to 3. Besides that it’s pretty much the same as last night.

So we have to wait for the votes of the soldiers, the diplomats abroad and the sailors (merchant). The votes of the diplomats and the sailors are negligible, but the soldiers tend to be right wing and there is a chance that their votes could make a small difference.

Then we wait to see how the excess votes are distributed according to the agreements the parties made before the elections.

What happens then is that the president conducts consultations with the various factions and then gives the job of forming the coalition to the head of the party that has the best chance of creating a coalition, not necessarily to the party that got more votes. None of this will happen before next week at the earliest.

What we do now is wait patiently and try not to get annoyed with the nonsense the TV commentators are spouting. Remember, they have to make a living and in their case this means yammering on, even when they have nothing meaningful to say. If you must, I’d say take note only of things said by veteran political commentators like Hanan Kristal and Yaron Dekel etc.

The politicians themselves will already be deep in coalition negotiation strategy mode. Remember this when you listen to them. If you can manage to see beyond the annoying, shrill rhetoric (not an easy feat), detach yourself and view it as you would a sport tournament, then you could actually sit back and enjoy the game.

(Talking about shrill, I know at least one person who is particularly ecstatic about Meretz only getting three seats in the next Knesset, because this means Zahava Galon is out )