All the signs are that Ariel Sharon will defeat Binyamin Netanyahu in Likud's leadership elections and continue as Israel's prime minister, writes Graham Usher from Jerusalem On Monday Ariel Sharon and Binyamin Netanyahu each offered the other the position of foreign minister should either become leader of Israel's next government. It was the latest round in what has become a political contest of gestures between the two men. Aides to Israel's incumbent leader swiftly made it known that the offer to Netanyahu was neither a commitment nor a promise but hinged on him "bowing his head and becoming a loyal member of the team". Netanyahu, bowed and disloyal, has little to offer: he is aware the chances of him being Israel's next prime minister are now somewhere between slim and none. This at least is what the polls show on the eve of primaries to elect the Likud Party leader and, in all likelihood, Israel's next prime minister when the booths close on 28 January. According to surveys on Wednesday in all the major Israeli newspapers Sharon is leading Netanyahu in the race by at least 20 points. It is a rating that has Israeli pundits scratching their heads. Despite two years of disaster in every realm of government Sharon remains a political leader stubbornly untainted by failure, whether in the eyes of the Likud rank-and-file or the Israeli electorate generally. In the face of such popularity Netanyahu's challenge has remained grounded by his inability to present a credible alternative to Sharon's military solutions that have so conspicuously failed to end the Palestinian Intifada. Netanyahu has not been helped by an electoral campaign that began badly and then got worse. He started out by assailing Sharon's economic policies, aided by an Israeli economy in recession and an unemployment rate of over ten per cent. Except that most Israelis bought Sharon's line that Israel's economic woes were a result of the "security situation" and that "security", or defeating the Intifada, must be won first. Netanyahu then attacked Sharon's grudging admission that one day a Palestinian state would be established in the West Bank and Gaza. "The current [Palestinian] leadership must be ousted," he told Israel's Yediot Aharonot newspaper on Tuesday. "To give them [the Palestinians] a state now would be a mistake of historic proportions. It will result in an abysmal deterioration of our state." Netanyahu's problem is that Sharon has long called for the "ousting" of the present Palestinian leadership, and especially Yasser Arafat. His bigger problem is that over 50 per cent of Likud voters support the establishment of a Palestinian state as part of any comprehensive peace agreement. Perhaps the sole substantive difference between the two candidates is that Netanyahu would prefer to head a "nationalist" coalition government, led by Likud but supported by Israel's far-right and settler parties. Sharon wants to form a national unity coalition, even with the Labour Party under its new "dovish" leader, Mitzna. Here too the tribal, "united" mood of the Israeli public is with Sharon rather than Netanyahu. The upshot is an electoral contest where the old Sharon has out-manoeuvred the young Netanyahu at every step, with the masterstroke being his appointment of Netanyahu as "caretaker" foreign minister after the Labour Party split from Sharon's national unity coalition last month. Netanyahu has since found it almost impossible to be simultaneously loyal and opposed to his prime minister. "Apparently it's over," admitted one Netanyahu aide to Israel's Ha'aretz newspaper on Wednesday. "Apparently the Likudniks prefer that Netanyahu wait a few years and compete in the post-Sharon era." The Palestinian leadership too is waiting for the beginning of the "post-Sharon era", though they fervently desire it will come sooner than in "a few years". Their present hopes rest on the unlikely prospect of Mitzna becoming Israel's next premier, and particularly his pledges to unconditionally withdraw the occupation from the Gaza Strip and immediately hold political negotiations with the Palestinians, "regardless of who their leader is". "Since the assassination of [Yitzak] Rabin, there hasn't been a courageous leader [in Israel] like Mitzna," enthused the Palestinian Authority's former Gaza security chief, Mohamed Dahlan, last week. "If he is elected [Israeli] prime minister there will be a peace agreement within a year." Other PA leaders have been dusting down "draft peace accords" based on the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations in Taba in 2001 to "convince Israeli public opinion that the path to peace is still open", announced PA information minister, Yasser Abed Rabbo, on Tuesday. But a lot has changed since Taba, even among the "peace partners". At the Egyptian resort Palestinian negotiators and Israel's former justice minister, Yossi Beilin, worked out a formula on the right of return for Palestinian refugees in which Israel would recognise the "right" while the Palestinians would forgo its actual implementation. But even this gesture has now been withdrawn. "The right of return is a red line for the Zionist peace camp, against which we have to stand like a fortified wall," said Beilin, on Tuesday. In such a climate of retrenchment it is easy to understand why most Israelis prefer the "credible" Sharon to unknown challengers like Mitzna and incredible ones like Netanyahu. He speaks a language all understand. "I don't believe there is one statesman who will oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state," he told Yediot Aharonot on Wednesday. But it will be "a totally demilitarised and unarmed state ... with Israel controlling its external borders and airspace". Most Israelis could live with such a "state"; most Palestinians could not. Which is why -- Israeli elections or no Israeli elections -- the war will continue between them.
