Narratives are as important as characters.
Dear Liz Dost,
Senior BBC International Correspondent.
In the narratives related to the Israeli POW elections, it is said that in 1996 the voters went to bed thinking that Shimon Peres, the leader of the Labor Party, had won; But when they woke up, they saw that Benjamin Netanyahu had won.
Of course, those choices were different; At that time, a direct vote was held both for the election of the leader and for the election of the party.
Now, 30 years later, on a morning when the vote count is still going up and down, the man they call Baby has won more mandates for Likud and his far-right nationalist bloc than exit polls predicted.
But with more than half the votes counted, there is still no clear winner in what the opposition hoped would be the last election for the longest-serving prime minister in captivity.
Narratives are as important as characters. Benjamin Netanyahu, who has long been known as the political "magician" of the Israeli prisoners, claims that his party is the largest party.
But now, the party has lost seats and his coalition has lost more seats. And his main challenger, political newcomer Gadi Eisenkot, has little chance of reaching the magic quorum of 61 seats.
There are other narrations this morning; Narratives about the identity of the captives. Should Arab-majority parties, whose number of seats reached an unprecedented high, be part of this change?
This is an option that the Netanyahu faction sees as a danger to "Jewish captives"; But others argue that it is a democracy.