Announcing under big banners Mr. Sharon’s landslide victory over his unfortunate Labour rival and the unexpected decision by the outgoing Ehud Barak to resign from both his seat in the parliament and the leadership of the Party, Israeli press gave the new Prime Minister the benefit of the doubt on his promises of delivering "peace and security".

"To the last minute, Barak kept upright with his mistakes and policy of consulting no one, as shown by his sudden announcement of abandoning the leadership of Labour and resigning from Knesset, decisions that surprised not only the new Prime Minister-elect but also his closest allies", observed the rightist "Jerusalem Post".

"Like others holding the post of Prime Minister before him, Sharon will also discover that the diplomatic and security reality seen from Prime Minister’s Office is not identical to that on the outside", editorialised the leftist "Ha’aretz".

"The need to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become pressing s a result of the conflagration which erupted four months ago. Sharon has a choice: to take up the negotiations from the point at which they halted at Taba and continue in an effort to reach a peace agreement; or to turn in a completely different direction and fulfil the darkest predictions of his rivals, who forecast that his rise to power would mean the destruction of he peace process and the detrioration of Israeli-Palestinian relations into a broad-based armed confrontation. Choosing the second option would be disastrous", Ha’aretz warned Wednesday.

Low-level violence persisted in the West Bank and Gaza Strip throughout the Election Day, with gun battles erupting in several locations and dozens of Palestinians injured in clashes with Israeli troops, as Palestinian activists, including Marwan Barghouti of the Fattah promised that the intifida would continue, regardless of who was Israel's prime minister.

His promise to form a unity government involving other parties is "a big hoax", the radical English Language "Keyhan International" wrote, adding that the prospects of Sharon's victory in Tuesday's presidential (sic) elections "implies that no doves exist even among the ordinary Israeli people, who are all made of the same stuff and are attuned to the extremist Zionist way of thinking", the paper said, obviously not understanding that the elections were not for president but to choose a prime Minister.

Other Israeli papers said since the composition of the parliament has not changed, Sharon would be a "prisoner" of smaller parties that would "squeeze him for advantages" as much as they could.

The fact is that even if his call to the defeated Labour to form a government of national unity is heard, yet these two largest parties could not form a working majority without smaller organisations.