Israel's Sharon Widens Lead Over Netanyahu in Likud

15/11/2002| IslamWeb

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has widened his commanding lead over hawkish Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in their race to head the Likud party in Israel's January election, a poll showed on Friday.The survey in the mass-circulation daily Yedioth Ahronoth said 54 percent of the right-wing Likud's voters would cast their ballots for Sharon in the party's November 28 primary compared to 38 percent for Netanyahu.

The findings signal that Netanyahu, an ex-premier urging even tougher policies against the Palestinians, has failed to convince the party faithful he has a solution to two years of violence and recession which has only grown worse under Sharon.

With the center-left Labour Party trailing badly in the polls and Likud likely to replace it as the leading party in the January 28 national ballot, Sharon stands as the clear favorite to head the next government.

Meanwhile, the stormy election campaign, accompanied by a fresh surge of Israeli-Palestinian violence, is expected to delay international peacemaking and deepen regional uncertainty ahead of a possible U.S. war on Iraq.

A resistance group that carried out a raid on a kibbutz that killed five Israelis, including a mother and her two young children, said on Thursday it would halt such attacks inside the Jewish state if Israeli occupation troops withdrew from Palestinian cities.

But Israel was quick to reject the offer from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of President Yasser Arafat's Fatah resistance group . "The only reason we are in and around the Palestinian cities is because the Palestinian terrorist groups...continue to launch terrorist attacks from these places," Sharon adviser Raanan Gissin said.

ISRAELI OCCUPATION ARMY OFFENSIVE

Following the kibbutz attack on Sunday, Israel launched a large-scale operation in the northern West Bank, sending dozens of tanks into the city of Nablus in a sweep for resistance men.

Fatah and the resistance Islamic group Hamas met earlier this week in Cairo to discuss a possible halt to Hamas resistance bombings in Israel.

Two Israeli newspapers reported that visiting Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman told Israeli officials an agreement was in the works to stop such attacks for three months, coinciding with the Israeli election campaign.

But a senior Israeli political source denied the reports, and Palestinian sources said the negotiations ended without any agreement other than to meet again.

Sharon's government took a lurch to the right last week with the appointment of Netanyahu to the caretaker administration created after Labour brought down the national unity coalition.

Arafat said on Thursday in Ramallah that "fanatic groups" were now in power in Israel and were "escalating every day."
Marking the 14th anniversary of his symbolic declaration of Palestinian independence, Arafat told reporters on Friday:

"Whether (Israel) likes it or not, a Palestinian girl or boy will raise the Palestinian flag over the walls of Jerusalem."

Sharon, a 74-year-old former general, had calculated that by bringing Netanyahu, 53, into his team he could curb his rival's criticism of him before the crucial Likud primary.

Since joining the cabinet, Netanyahu -- prime minister from 1996 to 1999 -- has taken shots at Sharon for refusing to expel Arafat and for his stewardship of the economy, but political analysts say the Israeli leader has skillfully fended him off.

"Today it can be said with certainty bringing Netanyahu into the government as foreign minister was a stunning maneuver by Sharon," Yedioth columnist Sima Kadmon wrote.

The poll, with a 4.5 percent margin of error, said Likud would win 35 seats in the 120-member parliament, up from 19, while Labour would fall to 19 from 25 -- reflecting the Israeli public's sharp turn to the right during two years of conflict.

The latest surveys also showed Sharon's former defense minister, Labour chief Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, facing resounding defeat by his main challenger, dovish Haifa Mayor Amram Mitzna, in the party's leadership primary set for next Tuesday.

At least 1,657 Palestinians and 631 Israelis have been killed since the Palestinian revolt against Israeli occupation began in September 2000.

PHOTO CAPTION

An Israeli occupation tank uses camouflage smoke as it patrols in the old city of Nablus November 14, 2002. Witnesses said occupation soldiers opened fire on stone-throwers in central Nablus, killing a 17-year-old youth during the second day of a large-scale Israeli sweep through the town. (Abed Omar Qusini/Reuters)