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Overwhelming
Indifference
The election campaign has barely begun, and
Israelis are ready to get the whole thing over with.
INA FRIEDMAN ISRAEL CORRESPONDENT
he Israeli elections may be
moved up to the end of
May this year, but the Is-
raeli electorate seems less
than enthused about the idea of
plunging into the tumult of an
election campaign.
"As far as I'm concerned, Shi-
mon Peres got it right in No-
vember, when he announced
that he would not hold elections
quickly so that the country could
recover from the shock of the as-
sassination," said Nahum, 60-
year-old researcher, When
approached on a Jerusalem
street. "People are still confused
by what's happened in this coun-
try."
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seats in the separate race for the
Knesset vs. 50 seats for the right-
wing Likud, Tsomet, and Na-
tional Religious Party, with the
remaining eight seats divided
evenly between the two Ortho-
dox lists.
The center-left bloc still came
out ahead even if four new par-
ties — which are still only on the
drawing boards — are taken in
consideration. The division
would then be 60 seats for the
Labor-led bloc (including two for
Shulamit Aloni, should she cre-
ate a list of her own), 41 for the
right, and eight for the Orthodox
parties.
The remaining 11 seats would
be divided among David Levy,
the Third Way, and Natan Sha-
ransky's immigrants' list —
which, if they joined a coalition
with the right, would leave the
Knesset in a paralyzing 60-60
tie.
Shimon Peres:
Electorate in shock.
That sense of lingering after-
shock, mild resentment of the po-
litical establishment, and even
electoral apathy were echoed re-
peatedly on the streets of
Jerusalem this week.
Supporters of Labor and the
left might cheer themselves by
reading such indifference as a
sign that — contrary to the claim
loudly voiced by the opposition
for the past three years — the
public is not impatient to "throw
the rascals out." But such opti-
mism is belied by the fact that it
is the Likud which has shown no
interest in bringing the elections
forward, hoping to use the five
months between May and Octo-
ber to close the gap between the
left and the right — or, more pre-
cisely, between Shimon Peres
and Binyamin (Bibi) Netanyahu
in their race for the prime min-
istership.
That gap, as reflected in a poll
published in Yediot Acharonot
last weekend, was 46 percent to
30 percent in Mr. Peres's favor.
The same survey showed the
center-left bloc of Labor, Meretz,
and the Arab parties winning 62
Benjamin Netanyahu:
Losing support?
Still, many Israeli voters are
uncharacteristically resistant to
toy with these calculations and
details. Encouraged by the
broader trends in the polls, La-
bor's backers tend to want to "get
it over with quickly," in the
words of Malka Bezalel, a 50-
year-old nurse who explained:
"I'm for whatever will save the
country the most energy and tax-
payers' money."
Others are put off by the
prospect of a long campaign for
more visceral reasons. "The
Likud has been running elec-
tioneering for the past three
years, so by now most people
ought to know who they want to
vote for," snaps Ilana Brosh, a