ky s kA;k„ k*b: Israeli Election 0 Left, In The Center C C C C After a bitter campaign, consensus points to a new Israeli prime minister next week. ERIC SILVER Israel Correspondent Natan Sharansky, minister of trade and industry, right, defeated opposition leader Ehud Barak in a seven-move chess game in Tel Aviv Sunday Jemsalem A s Israel's national election campaign came down to its final days this week, incumbent Prime ivtinister Binyamin Netanyahu of the Likud Party and Labor Party challenger Ehud Barak seemed locked in a close race, while most of Israel was predicting there would be a new team at the helm come next week. The elections, originally scheduled for next year, came early after key coalition partners yanked their support from Netanyahu. They felt his signing a "land-for-peace" deal in November violated Likud's historic claim for Israeli sovereignty over all of the West Bank, or the biblical heart- land known as Judea and Samaria. The voting on Monday, May 17, could give an out- right popular-vote majority to Barak, avoiding a June 1 runoff election. Center Party leader Yitzhak Mordechai was under pres- sure to get out of the campaign and assure Barak a first-round victory. The two other candidates — Ze'ev "Benny" Begin, the head of the right- wing National Unity bloc, and Azmi Beshara, the first Israeli Arab to seek the premiership, said they might get - out if Mordechai did. The campaign was overwhelmingly one of personality rather than issue. Neither Netayahu nor Barak would be specific about his intentions for topics such as the peace process, security with Lebanon, the ailing economy, water resources or religious pluralism. That political strategy will give the winner maximum flexibility in forming a 61-mem- ber ruling coalition in the Knesset, but provides no clear-cut mandate to move toward specific policy goals. After a sluggish start and with the guidance of American political consultants, Barak, the former military chief of staff; led a strategic campaign. He identified his targets — the Russian immigrants, the disappointed, mainly Sephardi, instinctive Likud voters in the depressed "development" towns and big city slums — and pounded away. By contrast, Netanyahu, under the influence of his own American consultants, constantly sought a sound bite to CENTER on page 26 5/14 1999 \ AA ankees Aghast Americans from the Detroit area find the election dismaying. DAVID JOSEPH Special to the Jewish News Jerusalem le ven before the official election results are in, Idele Ross is sure of one thing: This election has been the nastiest, dirt- iest, least issue-oriented election in the nation's 51-year history. "This whole election has been a headline-grabbing and macho game of `mine is bigger than yours,"' said Ross, a Detroit native and former Livonia resident who works as a broadcast journalist for Voice of Israel radio. Now that there are direct elections for prime minister — like America — the campaigns have become more personal and more aggressive." In interviews this week, Americans from the Detroit area said they were disturbed by the lack of civility in the campaign, where words like "liar," "traitor," "dangerous," "Godless," "leeches" and "rabble" are used casually in the Israeli media to describe candidates, parties and constituents. The Americans said they could not tell whether the sound-bite, slogan-slinging slop was yet anoth- er American product finding its niche in Israel, or whether it was home-grown. Probably a little of both, said Marilyn Grant, a Detroit native who lives in Netanya. "The intensity of Israeli elections, where everyone is involved, every- one has an opinion and more than 80 percent of the country comes out to vote is pure Israel," she noted. Grant's husband, Murray, is president of the University of Michigan Club in Israel, and active in politics in the United States and Israel. She counts herself a firm supporter of Labor and its prime ministerial candidate Ehud Barak. While intensity and high voter turn-out is good, she said, she despairs at what she sees as an American influence creeping into Israeli political life. "When I came to Israel in 1971," Grant remembers, "elections were about the issues. Candidates would talk to you (on television) for 15 minutes and explain what they believed in and why. Today, with all these 15-second commercial jingles on TV, they're just selling Jell-o. "Where is the debate? Where are the issues?" The fragmentation of the political parties was an eye-opener for Renee Himelhoch, a former assistant director of the Michigan/Israel Connection who made aliya in 1996. The proliferation of small par- ties makes politics feel less cut-and-dried than America's Democratic-Republican split, she noted. "Here you have the option of picking a large party whose views you only partially agree with or ,K=N picking a smaller party whose views you do agree with but whose sphere of influence is minimal." Several noted with dismay the political posters seen everywhere, producing a visual pollution that America would not accept. The Americans also noted that the common Israeli practice of tearing down your opponent's poster before replacing it with your own, leads to mounds of trash clutter- ing the streets under billboards. Dori Adelman, a New York University student L. - \ from West Bloomfield who is spending her junior year in Israel, said she was amazed at the ubiqui- tous nature of the election. "Everyone is so involved," she said. "Everywhere you look there's a 10-year-old hold- ing a poster and trying to give a bumper sticker. This election clearly affects people's lives here to a much greater degree than it does in America." I I