Ariel Sharon sought to neutralise the single greatest threat to his chances of remaining Israel’s prime minister yesterday by inviting his arch-rival and former premier, Binyamin Netanyahu, to join the cabinet as foreign minister.
The prime minister and the man with his eye on the post were expected to meet yesterday to discuss the offer, but sources in Mr Netanyahu’s camp said he was not enthusiastic about joining a collapsing government.
The two men are the chief rivals for the nomination to be Likud party candidate for prime minister – a directly elected post in Israel – at the next general election. That could come within weeks if Mr Sharon is unable to put together a coalition in the knesset before a confidence vote on Monday.
The latest poll shows that support for Likud has surged since the last election two years ago, mostly because of Mr Sharon’s crackdown on the Palestinians in response to the suicide bombings. Likud can expect to almost double its number of seats in the knesset, while Labour faces losing about a quarter of its members.
That in effect turns the Likud primary into a ballot to decide who will be Israel’s next prime minister.
”I think Sharon is trying to avoid a bloody leadership fight with Netanyahu,” said Professor Gerald Steinberg, a political scientist at Bar-Ilan university. ”It could badly split Likud. Netanyahu has no interest in trying to prop up Sharon, but Sharon’s card is that if Netanyahu says no he would be portrayed as someone who is abandoning his national responsibility.”
Some of Mr Sharon’s ministers are urging him to call an election immediately because he still holds a number of advantages over Mr Netanyahu, but they could fall away. The finance minister, Silvan Shalom, and two cabinet colleagues, Ruby Rivlin and Limor Livnat, believe a shaky coalition, marred by infighting and inevitable collapse, will damage the prime minister.
”It is not certain that Sharon will beat Netanyahu today,” Mr Raven told Israeli journalists. ”But it is certain that every day that goes by reduces Sharon’s chances of victory.”
There are also political dangers in seeking an alliance with the extreme right.
Mr Sharon is looking to a coalition with the National Union-Yisrael Beiteinu amalgam of parties to keep him in power. Complicating the issue is the fact that the leader, Avigdor Lieberman, is a close ally of Mr Netanyahu. The prime minister’s allies fear that Mr Lieberman and his party could prove a Trojan horse if he joins the government only to trap Mr Sharon by setting up a confrontation over any number of issues dear to the right.
For instance, Mr Netanyahu favours expelling Yasser Arafat from the West Bank, while Mr Sharon has been dissuaded from doing so by the Americans.
The prime minister is much more trusted than Mr Netanyahu on the issue of the moment: security, particularly with war looming in Iraq. On the other hand, Mr Netanyahu is a superior political operator who has organised an effective group of campaigners within Likud that has already seized control of the party’s crucial Jerusalem branches.
”Netanyahu still has an unusual charisma with the party members that he has lost with the general public,” said Professor Yaron Ezrahi, a political scientist at Hebrew university. ”Likud people are prone to be impressed by the appearance of strong rhetoric and Netanyahu is more extreme than Sharon because Netanyahu is great at tapping fear and hatred as political assets. That’s not what Sharon does.”
And then there is the conduct of the primaries themselves, which have been marred by irregularities in the past in both of Israel’s major parties.
”The internal processes are not particularly transparent or particularly democratic. There is a lot that goes on that no one knows about,” Prof Steinberg said. – (c) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001