MIDDLE EAST: PALESTINIANS GIVE MUTED RESPONSE TO ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER ARIEL SHARON'S VICTORY IN LIKUD PARTY LEADERSHIP ELECTION

Record ID: 400317

  • Title: MIDDLE EAST: PALESTINIANS GIVE MUTED RESPONSE TO ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER ARIEL SHARON'S VICTORY IN LIKUD PARTY LEADERSHIP ELECTION
  • Date: 28th November 2002
  • Summary: (W1) TEL AVIV, ISRAEL (NOVEMBER 29, 2002) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL) 1. SV: ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER ARIEL SHARON SHAKING HANDS WITH RIVAL CANDIDATE BENJAMIN NETANYAHU AND MEMBERS OF THE LIKUD PARTY ON STAGE 0.19 2. ZOOM IN: SHARON AND OTHER PARTY MEMBERS STANDING TO OBSERVE A MINUTE COMMEMORATIVE SILENCE 0.33 3. CU: SCREEN SHOWING EXIT POLL RESU
  • Embargoed: 13th December 2002 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: TEL AVIV, ISRAEL / RAMALLAH, WEST BANK / JERUSALEM
  • City:
  • Country: Palestinian Territories
  • Reuters ID: LVAAEYUV8UNRVCRIGONRHF1V56J9
  • Story Text: Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has won his Likud party's
    leadership election after a vote overshadowed by deadly
    attacks on Israelis in Kenya and northern Israel.

    Palestinian reaction to Sharon's re-election has been
    muted.



    Challenger Benjamin Netanyahu conceded defeat late on
    Thursday (November 28) after television exit polls showed
    Sharon had crushed him in the right-wing party's ballot, a
    first step towards retaining the prime minister's post the
    former general has held for almost two years.

    A Channel One television exit poll gave
    seventy-four-year-old Sharon 61 percent of the vote compared
    to 37 percent for Netanyahu among the 305,000 Likud members. A
    Channel Two poll put the figures at 58 percent to 40.5
    percent.

    Sharon's victory was a first step towards keeping the
    prime minister's post in a January 28 general election. It was
    also a sharp blow for 53-year-old Netanyahu, whose hopes of
    returning from the political wilderness in a blaze of glory
    fizzled at the ballot box.

    Netanyahu led Israel from 1996 to 1999, when he called a
    time-out from politics after losing the prime ministerial
    election to Labour's Ehud Barak.

    Following Thursday's suicide bomb attack on an
    Israeli-owned hotel in Kenya, the Israeli Prime Minister said
    it was not a night for festivities and the party members
    observed a moment of silence to commemorate the dead.

    "This is not a night for celebrations. Today we have
    witnessed such harsh terrorist attacks against Israeli
    civilians. An attempt to shoot down an Arkia air plane, that
    has taken off from the airport of Mombasa. The terrible
    murderous attack against Israeli tourists in the city and the
    harsh attack in Beit She'an, at the Likud headquarters... Some
    of these murders are a part of the bloodshed culture of Arab
    terror, against the Israelis and Jews wherever they are is an
    attempt of the terrorists to disrupt the election and the
    democratic system," Sharon said.

    Opinion polls show Likud, benefiting from a hardening of
    Israeli public resolve in the face of a Palestinian uprising
    for statehood, is on course to win the national ballot.

    Netanyahu, Israel's foreign minister, signalled he
    intended to remain in the caretaker cabinet Sharon formed last
    month after the centre-left Labour Party quit the ruling
    coalition in a dispute over funding for Jewish settlements on
    occupied land.

    In a general election set for January 28, Likud is widely
    expected to beat the centre-left Labour Party because Israelis
    have shifted to the right in the face of Palestinian gun and
    suicide bomb attacks in a two-year-old uprising for statehood.

    Security is the burning issue for Israeli voters, a point
    underlined by a suicide car bombing at a hotel in Kenya that
    killed three Israelis and a missile attack that failed to hit
    an Israeli airliner taking off from a nearby airport on
    Thursday (November 28).

    Hours later, a Palestinian attack in northern Israel
    killed six people.

    Palestinian Labour Minister Ghassan Al-Khatib on Friday
    said the result of the Likud leadership election made no
    significant difference to Palestinians.

    "I don't see any significance in yesterday's elections
    which ended up by the victory of Sharon on Netanyahu because I
    don't see any significant difference in their positions at
    least vis-a-vis the Palestinian-Israeli relations and the
    peace process. Both belong to the ideology of the Likud and
    the political strategy of the Likud which negates the others
    and takes an opposition stand vis-a-vis the peace process and
    both leaders are equally intended to continue the reversal
    process of the Oslo process which brought us to the current
    situations," Al-Khatib said from his home in the West Bank.

    Ramallah was under curfew on Friday as Israel continued
    their occupation of the West Bank.

    Israel launched its military action in the West Bank and
    Gaza Strip after a wave of suicide bombings by Palestinian
    militants. It says they are aimed at rooting out militants.

    The speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council said on
    Wednesday Israel's reoccupation of most of the West Bank could
    prevent Palestinians from holding a general election as
    scheduled on January 20.

    At least 1,681 Palestinians and 662 Israelis have died in
    the Palestinian uprising which erupted in September 2000.

    jrc/np

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