jerusalem | Get set for the starting bell of Netanyahu vs. Sharon. After weeks of bitter sparring, the struggle for the leadership of the Likud Party, and Israel at large, is set to take place.
If pollsters are to be believed, Ariel Sharon will struggle to hold onto power in the party in next week’s key showdown.
The images of settlers being evacuated from their homes in Gaza and the northern West Bank did not play well in the Likud. And though the prime minister has been fighting back, he still trails Benjamin Netanyahu, who resigned last month as Sharon’s finance minister, in the Likud’s Central Committee, where the clash will take place.
Sharon’s fate — and the future shape of Israeli politics — could be decided on a seemingly minor procedural issue. On Monday, Sept. 26, the 3,000 members of the Central Committee will determine whether to hold a party leadership primary in November or, as scheduled, next April.
Sharon’s main rivals for the top spot, Netanyahu and the leader of the hawkish “Likud rebels,” Uzi Landau, both want the earlier date, hoping to exploit the post-Gaza backlash in the Likud against Sharon, which is reflected in a slew of recent opinion polls on the leadership issue.
Sharon wants more time to consolidate his support. He is saying an early primary is an attempt to “expel” a serving prime minister, a year and a quarter before the end of his term.
Both sides see the Central Committee ballot as a vote of confidence in the party leader. Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, one of Sharon’s closest political allies, describes the impending vote as “the most important by a party-political body in Israel in a decade.”
The outcome could determine who the next prime minister will be, whether Likud remains the party of power or splits in two, whether a totally new Israeli political map emerges and whether there is a follow-up to the Gaza withdrawal.
Latest polls show the Netanyahu-Landau axis leading by between 2 percent to 6 percent. According to Yediot Achronot, 47 percent of the Central Committee is for early primaries and 45 percent is against; Ma’ariv puts it at 48 percent to 42 percent.
Sharon’s Sept. 15 speech at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, in which he indicated readiness for further concessions, did not help his cause in the Likud.
“The Palestinians will always be our neighbors. We respect them and have no aspirations to rule over them. They are also entitled to liberty and to a sovereign national existence in a state of their own,” he declared.
Some pundits argued that the speech showed that Sharon has made up his mind to leave the Likud.
“This is not the way people in the Likud talk,” political analyst Aluf Benn wrote in Ha’aretz. “This way leads toward the center, toward a public that wants peace and is willing to give up more territory.”
Sharon, however, says he is determined to stay and win in the Likud. On the plane back from New York, the prime minister declared that he had founded the Likud and wouldn’t leave it.
Netanyahu’s tack has been to depict Sharon as a man who has abandoned Likud principles and is therefore no longer fit to lead the party. In a joint letter to each of the 3,000 Central Committee members, Netanyahu and Landau describe Sharon as “a subcontractor for the policies of the lef.,”
Insiders say about 900 of the committee members will vote against Sharon on any issue, and that another 900 or so will support him. The battle is over the remaining 1,200.
Yitzhak Regev, a leading Sharon activist and influential member of the Central Committee, says turnout will be key.
“If there is a high turnout, as I am sure there will be, Sharon will not only beat Netanyahu, he will destroy him,” Regev said. “The media have placed the issue at the top of the national agenda. Everybody understands its importance, and they will all turn out for the vote.”