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If you're interested in Israel's future, all you need to know is one statistic: among Israeli kids in their first year at primary school, about half are Arabs or ultra-Orthodox Jews. And their portion is expanding. Looking forward, a very different Israeli society is emerging, with its Jewish secular core shrinking

Israeli Arabs and ultra-Orthodox Jews are exempt from military service, and are under-represented in the workforce. As their relative weight in society keeps growing, Israel risks security and economic implosion, since fewer and fewer soldiers and employees will protect and provide for an expanding population of welfare recipients. The Jewish state's long-term survival depends on reversing the trend of non-participation among its Arab and ultra-Orthodox citizens.

special treatment comes with a price. At the personal level, freedom from military service extends your youth, but also bars opportunity. In Israel, the military serves as the basis of networking. Our Oxford and Cambridge are the elite army and air force units. (Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his key political ally, defence minister Ehud Barak, served together in the special forces.) An Arab or ultra-Orthodox seeking a job, even with an academic degree, stays out of the club and often faces prejudice and discrimination in the workplace.

"There will be an over-representation of the religious and ultra-orthodox – around one in three members of the Knesset, according to the latest polls," said Ofer Kenig, of the Israel Democracy Institute. About one in five members of the last Knesset were religious or ultra-orthodox, he said."This is a very significant change. The explanation is not necessarily the demographic growth of this sector but the success of religious parties in attracting support from secular and traditional voters."

He said there would be "a very high representation of Jewish settlers", up to 20 of the 120 members of the Knesset. Less than 5% of Israel's population lives in West Bank settlements.

the new political elite was a coalition of West Bank settlers, ultra-orthodox, national-religious and rightwing city dwellers.

the new party would be called Likud Beiteinu – "The Likud is Our Home"

"The prime minister is essentially signalling that he has chosen the extremist, pro-settlement right, that he has chosen … not to make progress in the diplomatic process," Zehava Gal-On, head of the liberal Meretz party, told Israel's Army Radio.

Netanyahu then further widened the coalition this year by joining forces with the centrist Kadima party, though that partnership soon broke up over the government's failure to push through a reform of military conscription laws granting exemptions en masse to ultra-Orthodox Jewish seminary students.Netanyahu might try to tackle the draft issue again with the help of the secularist Lieberman, given what appears to have been their decision not to inform Shas, the powerful religious party in the coalition, about their merger in advance."I was absolutely surprised by this," the Shas leader and interior minister, Eli Yishai, said, predicting the move would prompt left-leaning and Orthodox parties to form their own blocs.

Yesh Atid, a new centrist party led by the former television personality Yair Lapid, won 19 seats. It concentrated its election campaign on socio-economic issues and removing the exemption for military service for ultra-orthodox Jews.

Yehuda Ben Meir of the Institute of National Security Studies, said: "The story of this election is a slight move to the centre, and above all the possibility of Netanyahu forming a coalition only with his 'natural partners' does not exist. He is definitely going to work for a wider coalition."

Kadima, which was the biggest party in the last parliament with 28 seats, saw its support plummet and only just crossed the threshold of votes needed to win two seats, according to the partial results.

A prominent Israeli politician, Isaac Herzog, has shrewdly suggested that Israel actually offer, with conditions, to vote in favor of Palestinian statehood at the United Nations.

Yet the American House of Representatives voted 407 to 6 to call on the Obama administration to use its diplomatic capital to try to block the initiative, while also threatening to cut the Palestinians’ funding if they proceeded to seek statehood.

Similarly, when Israel stormed into Gaza in 2008 to halt rocket attacks, more than 1,300 Gazans were killed, along with 13 Israelis, according to B’Tselem, a respected Israeli human rights group. As Gazan blood flowed, the House, by a vote of 390 to 5, hailed the invasion as “Israel’s right to defend itself.”