WEST BANK/ISRAEL: Leading candidates present Israeli voters distinguished political, security and economic platforms

Record ID: 838653

  • Title: WEST BANK/ISRAEL: Leading candidates present Israeli voters distinguished political, security and economic platforms
  • Date: 25th March 2006
  • Summary: (BN09) JERUSALEM (FILE) (REUTERS) FORMER MAYOR OF JERUSALEM OLMERT VOTING IN MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS
  • Embargoed: 9th April 2006 13:00
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  • Topics: Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVAE96QCQV7YXH4LZDERYP687LI3
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  • Story Text: For the first time in decades Israeli voters have a genuine choice between three leaders who differentiate from one another in political, security and economic affairs, Israeli political analyst say.
    Israel's election campaign is heating up ahead of March 28th's general election. Three major political parties are vying for seats in Israel's Knesset: the newly-established centrist Kadima party headed by Ehud Olmert, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's successor; left-wing Labour party led by former Union Trade Chief Amir Peretz; and the right-wing Likud party headed by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
    "One of the impressive things about this election campaign is that for the first time the Israeli voter has a real choice between three different persons who really represent three different ideas about the country. In this sense the Israeli voter does have a choice now which he didn't in the past," political analyst Ari Shavit told Reuters.
    Shavit says the Labour leader Peretz offers the voters a left-wing option of radical social-economic reforms and renewal of the peace process with the Palestinians.
    "Mr (Amir) Peretz is being a real trade union leader, I would say an old-style trade union leader and bringing into politics a working class ethos that we didn't have in Israeli politics in many years and also representing the oriental Jews of Israel who were never represented at the top of Israeli politics. So Mr. Peretz is a novelty both in bringing back trade union politics and brining in an ethnic element which is fresh to Israeli politics," said Shavit.
    If elected Amir Peretz, 53, would become Israel's first prime minister of Middle Eastern descent.
    Peretz was four when he arrived here with his family from Morocco, part of a wave of poor Jewish immigrants from Middle Eastern countries -- known as Sephardim -- who have long felt sidelined by Israelis of European origin, known as Ashkenazim.
    An avowed socialist with a bushy moustache, Peretz broke through one glass ceiling in November by toppling Polish-born elder statesman and Nobel peace laureate Shimon Peres to take the helm of the centre-left Labour party.
    But since then, Labour under Peretz has been plagued by high-level defections and disarray, putting a spotlight on an ethnic divide within Israeli society largely unseen by the outside world.
    Since it was founded in 1948, Israel has never elected a Sephardi to be its prime minister even though Sephardim make up roughly half the country's Jewish population.
    Peretz rarely talks about what he has called Israel's "ethnic demons". Asked in a recent interview whether Ashkenazim were leaving Labour because he was Sephardi, Peretz said: "I hope that the ballots will show otherwise."
    Labour hoped the choice of Peretz would expand its appeal to largely underprivileged Middle Eastern Jews, who have seen the party as an elitist and out of touch bastion for Ashkenazim.
    Sephardi Jews have traditionally split their votes between the right-wing Likud party and the religious-right Shas.
    After a brief surge in support following Peretz's leadership victory, though, Labour has struggled to rebuild support.
    Labour veterans have criticised Peretz's lack of experience and see his old-school socialism as a recipe for economic failure. When Peres defected to the centrist Kadima party formed by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and now led by interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Labour lost some of its Ashkenazi backers.
    Labour does not expect to do more than to come in a distant second in the election.
    The Likud party is headed by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, 56, who in December 2005 swept to victory to lead the rightist Likud faction which was shattered by the defection of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
    Shavit says that Netanyahu promotes a "republican" free-market reforms and spending cuts and does not believe that peace or compromises with the Palestinians can be reached. In that sense he offers the voters a real right-wing approach under which he would hold on to whatever assets Israel has, Shavit added.
    "Mr. (Benjamin) Netanyahu, representing a real conservative approach both to the economy and to foreign affairs. In many ways Mr. Netanyahu is an Israeli republican, an Israeli new-conservative who does not have much support and this is why he has difficulties in attracting the voters. But he represent a real conservative republican approach," he said.
    Former Israeli Ambassador to the UN and Likud leader Netanyahu was elected prime minister in 1996.
    Under his ruling Israel has signed a U.S.-brokerd deal with the Palestinians in 1997, clearing the way for long-delayed handover of 80 percent of Hebron.
    Netanyahu took a time-out from politics in May 1999 when he lost power to then-Labour Party leader Ehud Barak in a national election.
    The U.S.-educated Netanyahu hit the lucrative lecture circuit in the United States and bided his time for the political comeback he finally launched this month when Sharon declared early elections as his coalition government crumbled.
    Netanyahu returned to the world stage as Sharon's foreign and then Finance minister. But he quit Sharon's cabinet in protest over the Gaza pullout, calling it a capitulation to Palestinian violence.
    But many of the Israelis, as it had been predicted in opinion polls, prefer Sharon's successor Ehud Olmert, 60, who represents a centrist approach of a unilateral withdrawal from parts of the West Bank and an attempt to create a compassionate market economy, Shavit says.
    "Olmert (is a) pragmatic, some say opportunistic, politician going for the middle, for the centre on every issue and being a master of manoeuvring. A very skilful shrewd politician, with no deep ideology anywhere. And in many ways perhaps Mr. Olmert represents really post-modern politics in Israel where deep ideas don't count anymore, identity doesn't really count and you vote for a kind of a successful.. and you vote for a kind of an efficient successful director-general rather than a leader."
    Olmert is a career politician who was first elected to the parliament in 1973 at the age of 28.
    He served as a cabinet minister in a Likud government from 1988 to 1992.
    In 1993 he was elected Mayor of Jerusalem, becoming one of several young politicians looking for high-profile positions outside a parliamentary arena long dominated by older men.
    A lawyer and a legislator, he fought for social justice. A fluent English speaker, Olmert built his reputation abroad as a moderate spokesman for the hardline positions of Likud Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir in the early 1990s.
    After years in the Likud he joined Sharon in forming Kadima.
    Sharon founded Kadima on a platform of ending conflict with the Palestinians, and reshaping Israel's political landscape. He left Likud after far-right members of the party rebelled over Israel's pullout from the Gaza Strip in September, the first withdrawal from Jewish settlements on territory Palestinians want for a state.
    But Sharon was hospitalised on Jan 4, after he suffered a severe stroke and has been in coma ever since.
    His seat was taken by his deputy Olmert and under his leadership Kadima presents a more radical agenda under which it vowed to shape Israel's borders by 2010.
    Olmert promised to impose Israel's final borders in four years through pullouts from parts of the West Bank, if a Palestinian government being formed by the militant Islamist group Hamas, does not recognise Israel and disarm.
    Many Palestinians believe the idea is a grab for occupied land that would deny them a viable state by keeping their cities isolated from each other by settlements and settler roads.
    On Friday (March 24) opinion polls showed that support for Kadima party and the right-wing Likud party weakened just four days ahead of the elections.
    The surveys, published by the Yediot Ahronot and Maariv newspapers, also showed the Labour party strengthening slightly.
    Shavit says that the clear choice between three distinguished politicians and their agendas makes the election campaign less sleepy and more exciting.
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