The race to decide who will be Israel’s next prime minister will be decided long before the average voter gets near a ballot box next February.
The opinion polls consistently put Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s Likud Party ahead. His personal standing is high and a recent survey shows his party picking up one-third more seats in the Knesset, leaving Labour trailing.
But Sharon is far from certain to retain the prime minister’s office.
First he has to wade through the mire of Likud’s notoriously dirty primary elections. And there the policies that have made him popular with the public have left him vulnerable to a potentially lethal challenge from Binyamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister.
Most Israeli voters back Sharon’s belief in a government of national unity (or co-opting of the left, as some see it), his agreement in principle that there should be a Palestinian state (even if he does little to make it happen), and his ruthless use of tanks in the West Bank in response to suicide bombings.
”In terms of voter appeal across the spectrum, Sharon has far more today than Netanyahu,” said Joseph Alpher, former head of the Jaffee Centre for Strategic Studies. ”Sharon can still appeal to people in the centre — and here and there on the left — in dealing with Yasser Arafat.
”Sharon is a rightwinger who believes in keeping control of the [Palestinian] territories and he’s been building settlements very enthusiastically right under everyone’s nose. But he is also a pragmatist.
”He has been quite careful to keep the Americans happy. He is committed to a national unity government. People like that.”
And then there is the looming war in Iraq. ”It’s very clever of him to set elections for February because there’s likely to be a warlike situation in the Gulf,” Alpher said. ”In this context, the public think of Sharon as a combat-tried general, a seasoned warrior you want running things in difficult times regionally. That’s an advantage over Netanyahu and whoever is running for Labour.”
But while Netanyahu may not be the public’s first choice, he has support where it matters — inside Likud ahead of its primaries, likely to be held within the month.
Netanyahu left office three years ago looking divisive and incompetent, but he has bounced back within Likud by carving out a position to the right of Sharon.
He portrays the prime minister as having made too many compromises in not expelling Arafat from the West Bank, and for failing to maintain a full military occupation of all the Palestinian territories. Where Sharon is prepared to endorse the principle of a Palestinian state, Netanyahu says he would allow no such thing.
Netanyahu’s people have also not let it go unnoticed that Sharon (74) is two decades older than their man.
Such views play well among a significant section of Likud, disillusioned with what they see as the moderation of a prime minister who has angered much of the world with his hardline policies.
Said Gerald Steinberg, a political scientist at Bar-Ilan University: ”The people who make the decisions in Likud have to choose between ideological purity and what the public wants, which is consensus. Likud has to decide whether it wants to throw out a successful prime minister, a popular prime minister, during a coming war. That would be, politically, an extremely questionable strategy.”
But Netanyahu is a consummate political organiser who evidently believes his time has come.
Alpher said: ”Inside Likud, we’re looking at a narrow sector of the electorate who tend to be very susceptible to right-wing rabble-rousing and no one is better at that than Netanyahu. He’s a formidable opponent for Sharon. This man is a total predatory opportunist with a lot of skills, particularly media skills.”
Netanyahu is also highly critical of the government’s handling of the rapidly sinking economy, accusing Sharon of being soft on that too. He favours a Thatcherite approach, with an emphasis on tax cuts, breaking up monopolies, and privatisation.
But while many Israelis are disgruntled at rising unemployment and falling pay, it is not a voting issue when security concerns loom large.
Alpher believes that Netanyahu, if elected, would also be forced to edge towards the centre of Israeli politics.
”The only way he thinks he can get rid of Sharon is to play the more hawkish ticket — get rid of Arafat, close down the Palestinian Authority. But if he were to get elected he would land in the White House and pledge the same degree of cooperation [President George W] Bush is getting from Sharon,” he said.
Still, Sharon may have scored an important early point. Last weekend he invited the former prime minister to join his government. Netanyahu said he would only do so if there were early elections, in an apparent bid to find a justification to reject the post without appearing to put personal political advantage ahead of the national interest.
With the election now called, Netanyahu had little choice but to agree. He was sworn in on Wednesday, putting him in the disadvantageous position of having to campaign against the prime minister and government he now serves. — (c) Guardian Newspapers 2002