By Stan Goodenough
Sep 27, 2005
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon won a paper thin victory over Knesset Member Binyamin Netanyahu Monday after the central committee of their Likud Party voted 1,433 to 1,329 against bringing forward primaries for the election of a new leader.
The primaries will be held, as scheduled, in April 2006, meaning that the next Israeli general elections will likely take place on schedule in about a year from now.
While the outcome was anticipated to be close, the tiny margin separating victory from defeat has left the once strongly-Zionist party?s central committee divided down the middle over the direction in which the Likud should lead the country.
Since its formation in 1973, the Likud has been the country?s major right wing party, either governing Israel or leading the parliamentary opposition.
Its platform includes efforts to end hostilities with the Arabs by pursuing treaties based on ?peace-for-peace? as opposed to the ?land-for-peace? approach pursued in the Oslo Accords and Road Map peace plans.
Sharon has been accused of manifestly departing from this platform by leading Israel in a unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip ? a major concession to the Arabs which critics charge has weakened Israel?s security, and provided for the creation of a terrorist state nestled up against Israel?s underbelly ? just minutes away from Israeli population centers.
With his immediate tenure now secured against efforts to dislodge him, Sharon is expected to see ?his? victory as a vote of support for his policies, and to further pursue them.
Those policies have seen Sharon getting into bed with the left-wing Labor Party and together with them last month overseeing the uprooting of thousands of Jewish families from their homes.
Despite Sharon?s win, Netanyahu apparently does not believe the vote shows overwhelming support for the premier?s course of action. Netanyahu told Israel Radio Tuesday that many of those who had voted against the primaries actually opposed the direction Sharon was taking, but were influenced to vote for him by incentives.
?Bibi,? who earlier described Sharon?s policies as ?more left than [the far-left] Meretz? Party, and who worked hard to get the central committee to return the Likud to its original path, has pledged to remain in the running for the leadership and to stand against Sharon next year.
Ha?aretz Tuesday quoted Sharon?s polling advisor as saying that despite the prime minister?s win in this round, it would be ?very difficult? for Sharon to secure victory in the primaries, as the much larger rank and file Likud Party membership who will vote then is believed to have shifted increasingly against the prime minister.
Commentators have for years described the political contest between Israel?s right and left wings as a ?battle for the soul of the Jewish state.?
Broadly speaking, the right supports a stronger Jewish Israel, while the left would rather see the country transformed into a secular-humanist democracy.
In this light, Monday?s win for Sharon ? once known as a hardline hawk ? is ironically being celebrated on the left as a victory for the post-Zionist cause.