One week after the elections and what we have right now is a political stalemate without a clear outcome.

Right now we don’t have a government – neither Bibi nor Livni have enough MKs to form a government, since Avigdor Lieberman has not recommended either and who knows what he’ll do come Wednesday at Beit Hanassi. Both Bibi and Livni are trying to entice Lieberman into their camps with promises of ministries and freedom to vote on pertinent issues such as conversions and civil unions. Both Bibi and Livni have promised to topple Hamas once they’re in power – like Lieberman wants. Lieberman would prefer a Likud-led government, but he has problems with the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, which will fight him on state-religion issues and changing the electoral system. Shas’ leader has also called Liberman the Devil. Lieberman didn’t like that at all. The Likud is trying to square that circle now: how to give Lieberman what he wants on civil-religious issues while not radically changing the nature of the country’s religious establishment. Everyone in the big parties wants a Likud-Kadima-Israel Beitenu coalition government of 70 MKs . The fight now is over who heads that government, Bibi or Livni. Even after the elections it’s still Bibi or Livni.

Netanyahu won’t admit he was beaten, and neither will Livni. Neither currently has the necessary 61 MKs recommending them to form a government.

Neither has called the other on the phone since the election – to congratulate on the victory or to console in defeat.

The Kadima argument: We’re the biggest party we should form the government
Imagine an athletics race where someone reaches the finish line first, but someone else, who came in second in a photo finish, says he has won because numbers 3, 4, 5 in the race are all his friends. “28 [Kadima's final tally in the election] is more than 27 [Likud]. There was no ballot with the words ‘bloc’ or ‘camp’ written on it,” Livni said Sunday.

The Likud argument: We’re the biggest bloc so we should form the government
The country voted Right. The country has moved to the Right. The right-wing bloc is the largest [although it looks like this bloc is not as solid as it seemed to be just a few weeks ago], and everything else, according to Likud MK Silvan Shalom, is just “tricks, shticks and shady plans.”

Bibi is trying to drive a wedge between Livni and her MKs by offering Kadima a huge deal, a deal they can’t refuse: anything up to 10 ministries, several other deputy ministries, and the chairmanship of some serious committees.

Livni’s red lines are a rotation government or opposition. Bibi is trying to pressure Livni’s partners in Kadima [Mofaz, Itzik, Boim, and others] by floating the idea that a Likud-led government would give Kadima eight or nine ministries to see how long Livni can withstand the internal pressure to join a coalition with such a sweet deal. Livni said Sunday that Kadima would not be tempted with promises of ministries – but there are enough MKs in Kadima who don’t want to go into the opposition.

Livni has made it clear she doesn’t want to sit in a Likud-led government, no matter how sweet the deal is. She doesn’t want to be “number 2″ again. She’s been Ehud Olmert’s number 2 for the past three years – and spending another 3 or 4 years as number 2 again would erode her public image – especially now as Livni feels she won the ‘popular vote’ by beating Likud in last week’s election. She can either be “the popular Foreign Minister” in a Netanyahu government and watch as her popularity erodes [under Bibi's quiet patronage], or head into the opposition as the “popular leader of the opposition” and hope that Bibi’s narrow-Right government tears itself apart while fighting the entire world on every illegal outpost.

Would opposition be so bad for Kadima? If Bibi forms a narrow-right government of 65 MKs [including Israel Beitenu, Shas, and the National Religious parties] the assessments are that he won’t be able to govern for very long, and that either international pressure for peace moves with the Palestinians and or the Syrians, outpost removal and settlement expansion; or internal pressure from within the coalition between Shas and Israel Beitenu on religion and state issues – will eventually bring the government down, perhaps within a year or 18 months. That’s not too long for the popular Livni [and the strong Kadima] to wait in the opposition, while constantly sniping at the Netanyahu government.

President Peres will call the political factions on Wednesday evening [after the final election results are written into the registry] to start deliberating about the formation of the new government. The key question now is who Peres will tap to form a government, or what he’ll say to both Livni and Bibi once he gets them in a room together, alone.

It seems that what the country wants right now is a right-leaning national unity government headed by centrist Tzipi Livni.

Let’s have a closer look at the political blocs:

On the left [from left to right in the left] we have the Arab parties, Hadash, Labor, and Meretz. Hadash has moved slightly more into the center of the left because the whole political map has moved to the right. Labor is now considered on the right wing of the Left. Labor chairman [how long will he stick around] Ehud Barak is considered on the right wing of Labor. Meretz is in such internal turmoil that it hasn’t decided yet where on the Left its going. So what does the Left want Livni to do? What does the Left want? Let’s start out on the assumption that the Left wants to rehabilitate itself, it wants to gather steam and regain its former popularity. But if Livni takes Kadima into the opposition, then she will be the Leader of the Opposition, and the Center-Left will be the ones to do all the heavy lifting of bringing down a Likud-Right government. And if Kadima brings down a Bibi government, then Kadima will reap the rewards and win the next elections, not Labor. Does that mean Labor-Meretz want Kadima to Livni to join Bibi in a national unity government [or rotation] thus leaving open the Opposition playing field open to the Left?

In the center we have Kadima.

On the Right we have Likud, Israel Beitenu, Shas, and the National Religious parties.

So we had a war that was not really a war: no real battles, no real results, and no real ceasefire.

Then we had an election that had no clear result, no undisputed winner, no definite government.

Who said it would be easy?