Ariel Sharon. Shimon Peres. Binyamin Netanyahu. Yassir Arafat. Shinui. Fatah. Likud.

Respectively: comatose, marginal, routed, dead, collapsed, routed and fifth.

Overnight the names that dominated Israeli politics for decades have vanished or been sidelined, to be replaced by a plethora of new personalities and parties that emerged from nowhere.

For Messrs Sharon and Peres the enemy is time, the last two political giants who belonged to the generation that founded Israel, one laid low by a massive stroke, the other an octogenarian still active but of secondary importance to the success of Israel’s new ruling party.

Principal among the casualties is the electoral humiliation inflicted on former Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Likud Party - whose name means Unity but whose factionalism and bickering has demonstrated anything but.

The party that dominated Israeli politics since 1977 is a fragmented rump after the defection last year of Mr Sharon, his successor Ehud Olmert and a host of senior ministers who formed the core of the new, centrist ruling party Kadima (Forward).

One of the outcomes predicted by close observers of recent polls was the surge in support for Yisrael Beitenyu (Israel, Our Home) - the party that pushed Likud into fifth place.

Appealing principally to Russian voters but capturing the imagination of many on the Right, it is led by Avigdor Lieberman, a Moldova-born West Bank settler whose uncompromising platform is branded as openly racist by critics.

He plans to strengthen Israel’s status as a Jewish state by transferring 500,000 of its minority Arab population to the West Bank, by the simple expedient of redrawing the West Bank to include several Arab Israeli towns in northern Israel. Another 500,000 would be stripped of their right to vote if they failed to pledge loyalty to Zionism.

Once unthinkable, its advocate now finds himself on the right of the political mainstream, with many more nominally centrist Israelis voicing quiet support for the notion.

"I think the real reason for the conflict is the friction between two nations; two religions," Mr Lieberman told The Times on the eve of the election."I don’t believe in co-existence. We can be neighbours, but we can’t co-exist."

Shrewdly he has refused to rule out joining Mr Olmert’s coalition and describes himself as an arch-pragmatist representing arch-pragmatists.

"The Russian Jews have no feelings for the past, only today and the future," he smiled. "In previous elections they voted for Yitzhak Rabin, Binyamin Netayahu, Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon. They’re not emotional, but very logical and practical. I tried to appeal to that logical streak."

On the left, the surprise emergence of the new Pensioners Party is a sign of how domestic issues surfaced, in an election largely dominated by discussion of Palestinian-Israeli security issues.

Gil (Age) is headed by Rafi Eitan, a 79-year-old fomer Mossad chief who ran a sophisticated spying operation against the United States - supposedly Israel’s closest ally - through the US Navy analyst Jonathan Pollard, who was convicted of spying for Israel in the 1980s.

Mr Eitan, who capitalised on concern over poverty and stringent market-oriented economic reforms during Mr Netanyahu’s term as Finance Minister, is a natural ally for Mr Olmert. He insists however that his party will only join a coalition that will safeguard the rights of the elderly.

The party represents 750,000 Israelis of retirement age, but also attracted many younger voters.

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