- Title: MIDDLE EAST: Israeli candidates make final campaign sweeps
- Date: 20th January 2013
- Summary: LIVNI TALKING TO RESIDENTS LIVNI SINGING A PEACE SONG ON STAGE CROWD CLAPPING
- Embargoed: 4th February 2013 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Jerusalem, Israel
- City:
- Country: Israel
- Topics: Politics
- Reuters ID: LVACK4NK154ILSGRHUT0REPW6HLR
- Story Text: Fewer than 48 hours ahead of Israel's parliamentary elections, candidates and activists intensified efforts on Sunday (January 20) to attract voters.
In Jerusalem, Likud members were hanging huge posters of their party leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on the famous Old City walls, pledging to keep Jerusalem away from the negotiation table.
According to final opinion polls right-wing Netanyahu, who is running jointly with far-right Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu, looks set to secure a third term in office. The two parties are predicted to win 32 out of 120 Knesset seats.
In the central city of Tel Aviv, Labour Leader Shelly Yachimovich telephoned wavering voters in a last ditch attempt to recruit support.
"At the moment most of our efforts are focused on undecided voters. There is an unprecedented number of undecided voters, most of whom are women. Therefore, in our campaign, we mostly address women who identify with social-democrat messages. We say that although everyone had already crowned Netanyahu as a king it is possible to replace Netanyahu," she told Reuters.
Opinion polls forecast a respectable second-place finish with up to 17 seats for the centre-left party, now focused on pocketbook rather than peace issues, with talks on Palestinian statehood frozen since 2010 in a dispute over Israel's settlement-building policies.
Yachimovich, a former journalist, has said she will not join a Netanyahu government.
Also on Sunday centrist Hatenuah party chief, Tzipi Livni, took her campaign to the rocket-hit town of Sderot, on the border with Gaza.
Livni, a former foreign minister and peace negotiator, vowed to renew talks with the Palestinians.
"Because in Sderot, despite its image, there are people who want us to fight terror but they are also eager for peace because they too want to live in a country which does not only theoretically advocate peace but actively pursues it and expects its leadership to do it and to leave no stone unturned so that we could live here in peace," she told the crowd at a campaign rally.
Livni is predicted to win nine seats.
In the election, Israelis vote for a party's list of parliament, and no one faction has ever won a majority in the legislature.
After the ballot, Israel's president chooses a party leader to try to put together a governing coalition. That is usually, but not always, the head of the party that won the most parliamentary seats. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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