Netanyahu Challenge to Sharon Sputtering

It says something about how far to the right Israel has moved when veteran warhorse Ariel Sharon is cast as a moderate in the race for leadership of his party and of the nation.

Moderate only because the prime minister’s opponent is Benjamin Netanyahu, who is staking out far-right positions in an increasingly long-shot bid to replace Sharon.

The two men vie for election as head of their Likud Party today, and the winner will almost certainly become the next prime minister of Israel in a Jan. 28 vote -- the country’s third national contest in less than four years.

Four opinion polls Wednesday gave Sharon leads in excess of 20 percentage points over Netanyahu.

Netanyahu, who is usually considered to be the possessor of unrivaled charisma and politicking talent, has apparently fallen short when it comes to a quality Israelis see in the former prime minister’s longtime political nemesis: trustworthiness.

As the influential newspaper Haaretz put it in a headline Wednesday: “It’s the Credibility, Stupid.”

In the final days of a brief but nasty campaign, Netanyahu launched a none-too-subtle assault on Sharon and his policies. In interviews, ads and campaign rallies, he accused Sharon of failing to protect Israelis from Palestinian attack and blamed Israel’s dire economic straits on Sharon’s lack of vision.

“The government under Sharon’s leadership lowered the level of expectations to grass-high,” Netanyahu told Israel’s largest daily, Yediot Aharonot. “Despair is eating away at everything good in this people.

“I am asking for the support of those who believe that we can get out of this situation. I have solutions.”

Among those solutions, he said, is to “seize and cleanse” all Palestinian territory and oust the current Palestinian leadership. He favors expelling Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat and opposes the creation of a Palestinian state.

But the silver-tongued politician known as Bibi has failed to sway Likud voters.

Sharon largely ignored the competition, especially Netanyahu, who became his foreign minister in the lame-duck government created last month when the departure of the center-left Labor Party triggered the need for new elections. Instead, the 74-year-old sheep rancher and veteran of every Israeli war portrayed himself as a trusted commander best able to guide the nation through tough times.

Sharon is widely perceived among the public as reliable, including by those who complain bitterly about deepening poverty and a skyrocketing death toll in Israel’s battle with the Palestinians.

“[Sharon] has attained an unprecedented status in which the worse things get, the more the people trust him,” said political commentator Yoel Marcus of Haaretz.

Israeli unemployment and poverty rates are reaching unprecedented levels. Israelis are dying in political violence on a scale not seen for decades. Yet Sharon is admired by many Israelis for cracking down aggressively against the Palestinians, for pushing measures -- controversial among human rights organizations -- such as targeted killings and the reoccupation of Palestinian territory, and for doing it without provoking much outcry from other governments.

The reality is that Sharon and Netanyahu’s political differences are minor, the clash of their personalities and private rivalries enormous. When Netanyahu was elected prime minister in 1996, he made Sharon squirm by initially refusing to find a place for him in the Cabinet. When Netanyahu fell three years later, Sharon very publicly picked up the pieces of a party that was a shambles.

Last week, following the destruction of a commuter bus by a Palestinian suicide bomber, resulting in the death of 11 passengers, Sharon didn’t invite Netanyahu to emergency security consultations involving senior Cabinet ministers. Netanyahu got back by making a high-profile visit to a hospital to comfort survivors, TV cameras and foreign ambassadors in tow.

Sharon shot back Sunday at the weekly Cabinet meeting, congratulating Netanyahu for his “PR work.”

In a rather implausible sally, Netanyahu sought to portray Sharon as something just short of a closet leftist. He said there was really very little difference between Sharon and the new leftist head of the Labor Party, Amram Mitzna, who advocates a series of conciliatory gestures toward the Palestinians.

Sharon called on the trappings of his office and the remarkably good relations he enjoys with the White House as his campaign backdrops.

He has suggested in newspaper interviews that Netanyahu endangers the special Israeli-U.S. relationship by making inflammatory anti-Palestinian statements at a time when Washington needs international support for any war against Iraq.

“You need tenacity in this war,” Sharon said. “Good judgment. Responsibility, not shouting. Not slogans. You need to speak less.

“I am good for difficult situations.”

Sharon’s landslide victory in February 2001 over then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak was a final, long-sought vindication for one of Israel’s most controversial figures. Reviled by the Arab world and officially blamed for failing to stop a 1982 massacre of Palestinian refugees, Sharon fought back to achieve the land’s highest position long after his political career had been written off by pundits.

Sharon, in contrast to Netanyahu, is seen as a man of his word, even to those on the opposite end of the political spectrum. He has never made a secret of his world view that today’s conflict with the Palestinians is part of a 100-year continuum, nor of his desire to destroy the Palestinian Authority and replace Arafat with malleable leaders.

Where Netanyahu is sometimes seen as glib and too slick, Sharon is an authority figure who commands respect.

Many Likud supporters, in addition, are averse to toppling a sitting prime minister. The prevailing attitude is to stick with a winner, especially in the middle of turmoil. Polls show Sharon would easily defeat Labor’s candidate and carry the party to a near-majority in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.

Pollster Rafi Smith said his surveys indicate that Likud could nearly double the number of seats it has in the Knesset, to 40 in the 120-member body. At that point, it wouldn’t be difficult to invite several smaller parties into a coalition and form a majority-holding government.

“Sharon has managed to grasp more of the middle ground,” Smith said. “He is seen as more moderate than he looked in the past. That’s been his main achievement, creating this perception.”

Netanyahu, on the other hand, appears extremist, Smith said. Netanyahu had hoped to carve out his following from Likud’s hard-right core, including Jewish settlers who brook no compromise with the Palestinians over territory or rights.

But he may have failed to take into consideration several factors. For one, Likud organizers conducted a massive signature drive earlier this year, doubling party rolls to more than 300,000 people. The majority are said to be Sharon supporters and, like him, accept, however grudgingly, that an eventual Palestinian state is inevitable.

Second, the upcoming national election reverts to a strict parliamentary system. Netanyahu benefited in 1996 when Israelis cast a separate ballot for the prime minister. Personality mattered more.

This time voters are simply choosing the party.