Israel has had two elections in two days, and the winners include no new faces.
Yesterday in the runoff for the Labor Party leadership, former Prime Minister Ehud Barak (1999-2001) won a narrow victory over Ami Ayalon. Barak, a former IDF chief of staff, is likely to become the new Minister of Defense, replacing Amir Peretz. In the event that Bibi Netanyahu remains the leader of the Likud, and that the Kadima party doesn’t last through another election, the next election could be a rematch of the 1999 election. (It’s not clear when that next election will be, because even though Ehud Olmert has had approval ratings around 2-3%, his status in office seems to be stable, due to mutual assured destruction: even though no one likes Olmert, no one wants new elections right now, because the left prefers Olmert to Netanyahu and the right prefers Olmert to Barak.)
Today the Knesset elected former Prime Minister Shimon Peres (1984-86, 1995-96) to the mostly ceremonial office of President. This is a milestone for Peres: it is the first time in his political career spanning half a century that he has won an election! (Peres became Prime Minister in 1984 under a power-sharing agreement with the Likud, and in 1995 upon the death of Yitzchak Rabin. Peres lost the presidential election in 2000 to the now-disgraced Moshe Katsav.)