TEL AVIV: Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon may have scored a handsome victory in the Israeli parliamentary elections, but never has a winner had his hands so tied in forming a coalition.

And never has a loser had such power to prevent the formation of a stable government as has Labour Party leader Amram Mitzna, analysts said on Wednesday.

Sharon succeeded in the elections on Tuesday in making his Likud party the largest faction in the Knesset (parliament), but the 37 seats it gained are still not enough to allow the premier to dictate the composition of Israel’s next coalition without serious hurdles.

Paradoxically, it is Mitzna’s refusal to join a Likud-led government which is determining Sharon’s coalition manoeuvers, forcing the premier to choose between other alternatives which analysts say he is less than enthusiastic about.

Mitzna enjoys this privileged position, even though his party entered the election as the largest faction in the 120-seat Knesset and ended it with only 19 seats, its worst score ever.

Based on the near-final election results, Sharon’s easiest alternative to unity coalition including Labour is to form a coalition with the right-wing and religious parties.

This, however, is understood to be his least favoured option.

“Sharon doesn’t see himself at the head of a coalition ... that would halt all political progress, push to expel Palestinian (President Yaseer) Arafat and keep Israel from getting American loan guarantees,” analyst Yossi Verter wrote in the Ha’aretz daily.

Flushed with victory, Sharon on Tuesday told the nation that he wanted to set up a government of national unity.

To do so, he would have to persuade Mitzna to go back on his solemn pledge to resist Sharon’s political charms, but whether the Labour leader would do so, even when the alternative is life in the opposition, is a moot question.

This would not only alienate those who believed Labour when it said it offered an alternative to Sharon’s policies, but would also likely undermine Mitzna’s position as party leader, which the election results have done nothing to consolidate.

However, with several senior Labour officials believed to hanker after a return to their unity partnership with Sharon, which ended in November just before Mitzna won the party leadership, Mitzna could find himself having to defend his leadership on two opposing fronts.

Sharon too could find that a national unity government brings with it its own political baggage. To entice Labour, he will have to show flexibility as regards his views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This is likely to lead to friction not only with prospective partners on the right of the political map, but also with his own party, many of whose incoming legislators are even more hawkish than the premier.

Joining Sharon in his efforts to form a unity government and overcome Mitzna’s repeated obduracy is the big winner of Tuesday’s election, the anti-clerical Shinui party, which more than doubled its Knesset representation from six to 15 seats.

Shinui leader Tommy Lapid pledged to enter only into a secular unity government, dominated by his party, the Likud and Labour and without the ultra-Orthodox parties.

For Shinui, entering into government is not, as with Labour, an option, but more of a necessity, since it will find it increasingly difficult to carry out its promise to weaken what it calls the ultra- Orthodox control over Israeli society and the budget while it is in the opposition.

But Shinui’s determination to be part of the government could embroil Sharon in a conflict with his own voters and party.

For Shinui to enter a coalition, Sharon would have to ditch the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, whose supporters are ideologically close to the Likud and which has had an informal pact with the ruling party which the premier would be loathe to end.

He may however, have no choice.

Sharon’s final option is to call for new elections if he is unable to form a new coalition. This might shock the Labour Party into joining the government.

Alternatively, it might send Israelis back to the polls — again.—dpa