Three months before they are scheduled to take place, Israel’s March 28 elections might be said to be already over. Not only do their results seem clear, the Kadima-Labor coalition that will result from the coalition negotiations following them seems clear, too. If there is any electoral drama in Israel these days, it concerns only the Palestinian elections that are scheduled for January 25. Closer in time, their outcome is far less predictable. In fact, it is not at all certain whether they will take place at all.

For a short while, after Amir Peretz surprised Israel by winning the Labor Party primaries in November, and before Ariel Sharon surprised it again by bolting the Likud to form his new Kadima Party, it looked as though there might be a real campaign. Not that Mr. Peretz seemed capable of defeating Mr. Sharon even then; at his peak, the polls showed him winning 25-26 seats in the next Knesset as opposed to Mr. Sharon’s 35. Still, that looked close enough to promise some excitement.

Yet what has happened since then is that, on the one hand, Ariel Sharon has so commandingly bestrode the political center in Israel with his new party that Labor, like Likud, has been pushed to the margins, while on the other hand, Amir Peretz has only abetted this by making tactical mistake after mistake in his campaign.

Mr. Peretz’s biggest mistake, though, was not tactical but strategic. An old-time labor unionist who thought he could make economics rather than Israel’s conflict with the Palestinian the main issue of the campaign, he failed to take into account that even though recent statistics show a disturbing 20% of Israelis living below the poverty line, this still means that 80% live above it and have no desire to foot the bill for the expensive war on poverty that Mr. Peretz proposes launching.

The fact is that most Israelis are doing better rather than worse today because of the conservative fiscal and monetary policies of the outgoing Likud government and its finance minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which raised the economic growth rate from zero to over 5%, and want no part of Mr. Peretz’s dreamed return to the full-fledged welfare state.

Moreover, Israelis understand, too, that long-term prosperity in Israel depends as much on settling the Palestinian conflict, or at least on reducing it to a low level, as it does on economic policies – and here Amir Peretz has nothing to offer at all. His efforts to convince Israelis that negotiations with the Palestinian Authority can still lead to peace make him appear a man who has learned nothing from the events of the 12 years since Oslo, especially now that this Authority is weaker and more anarchic than ever and will have to give Hamas a large share of power after the January elections, assuming that these are not canceled on one pretext or another.

The Palestinians have in fact turned out to be Ariel Sharon’s best campaigners. If anyone has had doubts about the prime minister’s unilateralist approach, which holds that Israeli-Palestinian negotiations are a waste of time and that Israel will have to manage the conflict as best it can by withdrawing to borders determined by itself, recent events in the Palestinian world should have dispelled these once and for all.

Perhaps one day, somewhere down the road, the Palestinians will succeed in establishing a stable, democratic society with which it will be possible for Israel to do business. But that day is nowhere in sight, and those who argue that Israel should sit tight and wait for it to come are betting on a horse whose great-grandfather has not have been born yet. Israel cannot afford to sit tight for that long.

Indeed, little by little the pieces of a de facto Israeli-Palestinian settlement are beginning to fall into place, and the strengthening of Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza is another one of them. This settlement will be nothing like that which was dreamed of by the Israeli leaders who went to Oslo, nor will it resemble any of the rosy visions that politicians and commentators throughout the world have had of a grand Jewish-Arab rapprochement. There will be no rapprochement at all, but rather separation and slowly subsiding tensions marked by a gradual decrease in violence, which will take many years to disappear and will flare up periodically in the meantime.

Seen in this perspective, it makes little difference to Israel whether Palestinians elections are held later this month or not, and if so, who wins them and by how much. Even if they are held, they are likely to take place in an atmosphere of lawlessness that will produce charges of fraud and intimidation on the part of the loser, and they will more probably be a step toward the further disintegration of Palestinian society than one toward its stabilization. This will not be a society from which Israel can expect a great deal. On the contrary, it is one that it should strive to have as little as possible to do with in the years to come.

Election campaigns in most democratic countries are accompanied by a feeling that the future is being determined. This winter’s election in Israel is accompanied by the feeling that the future already has been determined and that the March 28 vote will simply serve to ratify it. But it is not a bad thing that the country feels that way. It is a sign that finally, perhaps for the first time since 1967, it knows, more or less, where it is going.

Mr. Halkin is a contributing editor of The New York Sun.