Is Bib' Coming Back?

A battling Netanyahu is winning his case with the Israeli public.

LARRY DERFNER
Israel Correspondent

Street Support

0

ne might think that a for-
mer prime minister under
police investigation for
bribery would lose populari-
ty. Not Binyamin Netanyahu.
In a Gallup Poll published last
weekend, Netanyahu pulled even with
Minister Ehud Barak. The pre-
vious Gallup Poll showed Netanyahu
trailing Barak 50-34 percent.
The poll comes as the possibility of
new elections is in the air, what with
the evident failure of the peace talks
with Syria and the internal combus-
tion in the government sparked by the
feud between the Shas (Sephardi
Orthodox) party and the left-wing
Meretz party
The survey was taken after Israeli
police recommended indicting
Netanyahu for bribery and other
charges. He allegedly accepted at least
$50,000 in free moving service from a
private company, and allegedly kept
700 gifts he received as prime minister
— gifts that lawfully belong to the
state.
But what might have played the
greatest influence on the poll result was
not the recommendation to indict, but
rather Netanyahu's battling, swarming
TV defense of himself and his assault
on police integrity. In a nearly hour-
long interview, Netanyahu accused the
police of "hunting" him — of trump-
ing up accusations for purely political
reasons. "The police have decided to
neutralize me in the political arena by
conducting this investigation and draw-
ing it out," he said.
Netanyahu did not give any evi-
dence for his charge, nor suggest why
the police would want to hound him
out of politics. During the probe,
however, he has accused the police
brass of siding with the left.

Public Agrees •

The former prime minister's grave
accusation fell on many receptive

Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu waits to be interviewed on
Israel's Channel One in Tel Aviv March 28.

ears. The Gallup Poll found 44 per-
cent agreed that police were acting
out of malicious political motives,
while 46 percent felt it was a legiti-
mate investigation.
During the TV interview,
Netanyahu portrayed himself and
his family — his wife, Sara, was also
recommended for indictment — as
having been personally devastated by
the investigation.
He blamed police for contribut-
ing to his mother, Cela's, stroke, and
for embittering her last days before
her recent death.
He blamed police for making his
young son Yair's life miserable.

At the start 'of the interview,
Netanyahu paid condolences to the
families of two Israeli pilots killed in
an accident, recalling that his broth-
er, Yoni, had also died in uniform.
Yonatan Netanyahu was killed lead-
ing the raid to save Israeli hostages
at Entebbe Airport in 1976.
The media didn't take well to
Netanyahu's performance. "It's hard
to respect a man who conscripts his
late mother, his late brother, his
young son and the Air Force tragedy
to escape the clutches of judgment,"
wrote Israel's leading print journal-
ist, Nahum Barnea of Yediot
Achronot.

But the emotional appeal seemed to
play pretty well to Netanyahu's hard-
core supporters, the Sephardi working
class. At Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda,
the popular outdoor market where
Netanyahu was hailed like a king
whenever he popped over for some
encouragement, vendors said Bibi was
the still the only. leader for them.
"Bibi is special. No one else is even
close to him. He's so strong, so
strong," said Ya'acov Azoubel in front
of his candy stand, making a fist to
illustrate. "Clinton came here and Bibi
wrapped him around his little finger.
He's no sucker. He doesn't give in so
easily. Next to him, Barak is weak.
The day will come when Bibi comes
back — in a big way."
Reviewing Netanyahu's TV appear-
ance, fish vendor Shmuel Calamarsti
said, "He convinced me 100 percent.
The police are after him because the
establishment is left-wing, and the
police are part of the establishment."
If the Barak government falls and
new elections are called, Netanyahu
would first have to get past Likud
leader Ariel Sharon in party primaries
to challenge Barak. In Mahane
Yehuda, vendors said they have great
reverence for the 70-year-old Sharon,
but said he was just too old to win.
Political commentator Hanan
Kristal echoed what public opinion
polls have shown consistently. that
Netanyahu easily outdistances his
party rivals as first choice for prime
minister among Likud supporters.
Kristal added, however, that
Netanyahu has another hurdle besides
Sharon to jump — Attorney General
Elyakim Rubinstein, who now must
decide whether to accept or reject the
police recommendation to indict the
former prime minister.
In 1997, Rubinstein turned down
the police recommendation to indict
then-prime minister Netanyahu for
colluding in.the shady, abortive
appointment of Rubinstein's predeces-

4/7

2000

