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Israel’s Likud Finds Itself in a Free Fall

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Times Staff Writer

Not so long ago, any politician from Israel’s conservative Likud Party could count on a consistently warm reception in the country’s open-air produce markets. The cramped rows of stalls heaped with fresh tomatoes and fragrant spices had been the movement’s heartland for as long as anyone could remember.

So when Uzi Landau, then a contender for the Likud leadership, toured a Tel Aviv market recently, he had reason to hope for the usual friendly meet-and-greet with vendors. Instead, he found himself heckled and booed.

“You wrecked the Likud!” a fruit seller shouted. “It’s a shipwreck!” yelled a fishmonger.

Landau was hustled away by aides who said a case of laryngitis had prevented him from speaking at length to his constituents.

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More than two weeks after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon broke away from the Likud, declaring that its goals were no longer compatible with the national interest, the country’s powerhouse political movement appears to have dwindled to a shadow of itself.

Polls have indicated that if elections were held now, instead of March 28 as scheduled, Likud would rank as the fourth-largest party, falling from 40 parliamentary seats to as few as nine. It ranked behind even the relatively small ultra-Orthodox party Shas, never a contender for the country’s leadership.

For the Likud, every passing day seems to bring some fresh disaster. On Wednesday, acting Chairman Tzachi Hanegbi abandoned the Likud and joined Sharon’s new party.

It has been a humbling turnabout for a party that has been a dominant force in Israeli politics since the 1970s, either as the ruling power or as a formidable, well-organized opposition.

“Likud has been blitzed,” political commentator Hanan Kristal told Israel Radio.

Analyzing the party’s precipitous decline, commentators point to a solidifying national consensus that the dream of a “Greater Israel,” a Jewish state whose boundaries would encompass those of historic Palestine, is dead. For decades, the Likud was all about territory -- the fervent wish to stake a Jewish claim to every rocky, hilly inch of the biblical Land of Israel.

But the country’s political disarray also suggests that no comprehensive vision has emerged to take the place of that dream.

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“The standing of the various parties now is like a big strand of spaghetti all wound around itself,” said Reuven Hazan, a political scientist at Hebrew University. “And by the time of the elections, everything could look entirely different. That’s how fast things change here.”

The Likud, in its post-Sharon incarnation, is trying to remake itself, oddly, in his image -- a combination of toughness in confronting any threat from Palestinian militants, coupled with a willingness to engage in negotiations that could yield a comprehensive peace.

Benjamin Netanyahu, Sharon’s longtime nemesis, is the front-runner to assume the party’s leadership. Netanyahu quit the Sharon government just before the start of Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip over the summer.

Netanyahu, a former prime minister, says he is in principle not opposed to territorial concessions to the Palestinians, only those from which Israel does not reap some benefit. “If they give, they get,” he is fond of saying.

In a sense, the Likud has come full circle. Its precursor party, called Herut, was the brainchild of Zionist visionary Vladimir Jabotinsky. In the early days of Israel’s existence, the Herut movement envisioned a Jewish state that stretched not only from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River but also into present-day Jordan.

“For many years after the creation of the state of Israel, that was considered a marginal, extremist view,” said Hazan, the political science professor. “But then came the ’67 war, and Israel’s control of the West Bank, and overnight this didn’t seem like such a pie in the sky. It seemed suddenly like some kind of achievable vision.”

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Sharon, a founding member of the Likud, was once an avid proponent of a Greater Israel, encouraging Jewish settlers to “seize every hilltop” in the West Bank.

Now, however, the prime minister’s official view is in line with that of the U.S.-backed peace initiative known as the “road map,” which holds that unauthorized outposts in the West Bank must be dismantled and borders agreed upon and that a Palestinian state will eventually stand alongside Israel.

At the moment, infighting appears to be the biggest immediate threat to the shrunken Likud. Its leadership aspirants include Netanyahu, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, all of whom have been sniping at one another to some degree.

“The Likud is in crisis; we cannot sweep it under the carpet,” Shalom told Israel Radio last week. “The question is: Who can rehabilitate the party, and lead it to victory?”

The answer might be no one. Cooler heads in the party’s leadership structure have sought, unsuccessfully so far, to establish a code of conduct under which the leadership rivals would not cross certain boundaries of invective, lest such accusations be seized upon during the campaign by Sharon’s new party or by the left-leaning Labor Party.

Labor is facing troubles of its own, primarily the defection of elder statesman Shimon Peres. Though well positioned to be the main opposition to Sharon’s new party, Kadima, or Forward, the Labor Party is handicapped by having at its helm a relative newcomer to Israeli electoral politics, former trade union leader Amir Peretz.

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In its heyday, the Likud had a long tradition of steamrolling its way to victory in elections through a well-organized grass-roots network. But Sharon, to the fury and dismay of his erstwhile allies, has been reaching out to the Likud rank and file.

Late last month, Sharon played host to dozens of mayors and heads of local authorities at his ranch in the Negev desert, making an all-out effort to court relatively low-level functionaries, whose support is often the key to success on election day.

“Kadima is a home for anyone who wants to see the state of Israel as a national home for the Jewish people,” Sharon told them, according to Israeli media accounts.

Many observers believe that traditional machine politics will count for little in the coming vote.

President Moshe Katsav has said the March elections will serve, in the broadest sense, as a decision-making vote on Israel’s long-term political path with the Palestinians.

“This time, it is a true referendum,” Katsav told Israel Radio. “We must reach a resolution to the debate that has been going on for 38 years, since the Six-Day War,” in which Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

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So potentially debilitating is the Likud leadership battle that some senior party politicians have urged that the matter be settled quietly among the contenders, rather than with a formal primary, now scheduled for the middle of this month.

“The Likud is facing very difficult days,” said Reuven Rivlin, the speaker of Israel’s Knesset, or parliament. “When the ship is in danger of sinking, we must not compete for prestige -- we must save it.”

But even if Sharon succeeds in attracting many Likud members to his new party, longtime watchers say it may prove a restive constituency.

Others warn that Sharon’s new party, lacking the historic heft of movements such as Likud and Labor, may not outlive the 77-year-old prime minister.

“The Israeli public likes historical parties, and it’s hard to change people’s political habits,” said Shlomo Ben-Ami, a former Labor minister.

Hazan, the political scientist, said that for the moment, Kadima was reaping the benefits of being a political novelty.

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“But in some very real sense, no one truly knows what this movement stands for -- how far it is willing to go to find some accommodation with the Palestinians and set us on a new path,” he said.

“And four months -- until the time of elections -- is a very long time for people to wonder.”

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