In Israel, it’s the Political Silly Season. This is a national festival, also known as “coalition forming,” that takes place every few years after elections. That’s why elections are best held – as they were this year – in the spring, which is now upon us in its full Mediterranean glory, since coalition forming resembles nothing more than an elaborate courtship ritual.

The purpose of this ritual is to mate the country’s future prime minister, that is, the leader of the largest party to emerge from the elections, with the head of the party that will be his main partner in running the government. This year that meant Ehud Olmert, leader of Kadima, which finished first in the elections with 29 seats, and Amir Peretz of Labor, which finished second with 19. Although Mr. Olmert is a fan of the free market who pals around with cigar-smoking businessmen, and Mr. Peretz is a trade-union socialist with proletarian airs and principles, it was from the start as clear as a desert dawn that Israel’s next government depended on the two of them getting together.

And yet as usual, the rites of spring began with the male triumphantly strutting and preening his feathers while pretending to notice every female except the one he most desired for his harem. Already the morning after elections, Mr. Olmert, whose party did not exactly perform in alpha fashion, having managed to drop in the last weeks of the campaign from a projected 40+ seats in the Knesset to a disappointing 29, was up bright and early, crowing over his victory and dropping matrimonial hints.

Eli Yishai and his Shas Party? A fine match! (Never mind that Yishai, who never even goes out on a date without the permission of Shas’ spiritual father, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, had explicitly stated before the elections that the party would never support another Gaza-style disengagement from the West Bank, which just happened to be the main plank in Kadima’s platform.) Yes, Mr. Olmert was definitely interested in Shas.

Avigdor Liberman and his Israel Is Our Home Party? A lovely belle – and how exotic! (Mr. Liberman, an ex-Russian immigrant with extreme anti-Arab views, is a darling of the far right wing with whom Mr. Peretz had sworn never to sit down at one table.) No, Mr. Liberman could not be ruled out.

Mr. Olmert was even willing to say a few kind words about the Likud’s Benjamin Netanyahu and to imply that he too might be suitable for the wedding canopy, even though he and Mr. Netanyahu have been as friendly over the years as Cain and Abel.

And Amir Peretz? About Mr. Peretz Mr. Olmert had nothing to say, except to declare that Kadima would keep control in any cabinet of the treasury, which Mr. Peretz – who like any future housewife wants the family purse strings to be in his hands – clearly coveted as his bride price.

For his part, the snubbed Mr. Peretz played his part to the hilt. To begin with, he didn’t let on for a moment that Ehud Olmert even existed, much less had won the election. The real winner, he implied, was Labor, even though it ended up with three seats less than it had in the previous Knesset. If there was going to be a wedding, why shouldn’t he be the groom?

And indeed, Mr. Peretz gave every sign of believing that he was the groom, sending some of his matchmakers to President Moshe Katzav to recommend that he be given first crack at forming the next government (it is the president’s prerogative in Israel to decide whom to entrust with this task) and others to the parties at the other end of the political spectrum to propose that, since the Center in the form of Kadima was a figment of the imagination, they join hands with him in a Left-Right marriage.(True, Mr. Peretz had said to the press the day before the elections, when asked whether such a Kadima-dodging coalition was possible, “Under no condition or circumstance!” But notice the subtle wording: He didn’t say, “Absolutely under no condition or circumstance.”)

The Right, needless to say, knew its lines perfectly, too. The National Unity-National Religious Party, the political wing of the settler movement, which campaigned against the left-wing Mr. Peretz as if he were running on the ticket of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, announced that it would put in a good word for him with the president. Benjamin Netanyahu of the Likud, who as minister of finance in the Sharon government considered Mr. Peretz a greater danger to the economy than three-digit unemployment, let it be known that he would do the same.

Consternation! Pandemonium! Headlines in the newspapers: “High-Ranking Members Of Labor And Kadima: Peretz And Olmert Jeopardize Joint Government!”

But Mediterranean springs are short. By early this week, the Silly Season was almost over. Ehud Olmert suddenly glanced in Amir Peretz’s direction and whispered to an aide, who quickly whispered to the media, that the treasury might be available after all. Amir Peretz batted bushy eyebrows and shyly murmured that, on second thought, he was quite willing to be Ehud Olmert’s bride.

You can look forward to a May wedding, presided over by the president. No one ever doubted that it would take place. Still, it wouldn’t have been the same if it weren’t first preceded by the traditional rites of spring.

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