DAVID LANDAU
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Jerusalem
ust 18 months after Binyamin Netanyahu
was voted out of office, public opinion polls
show that he would decimate Prime
Minister Ehud Barak in a head-to-head
contest — if Netanyahu can only get around the
legal obstacles to his candidacy.
Ever smooth before the cameras, Netanyahu gave
little hint when announcing his candidacy for prime
minister Sunday about his positions on the issues,
but he did offer some insight into how his campaign
will be run and what image he hopes to project.
Two themes were especially prominent:
• The "new Bibi" as Netanyahu is known, is a
more mature, sober and chastened leader who
admits to past errors and faults and openly seeks to
mend inadequacies; and
• His ostensibly failed first term must be reap-
praised in light of the subsequent failures of the man
who ousted him, Barak.
j
Secular Balancing Act
Netanyahu will try to convince
the Israeli public he has changed.
candidates for prime minister following Barak's
resignation must be current Knesset members,
which excludes Netanyahu.
Netanyahu is attempting to have the law
changed so he can run.
Since Barak's resignation, pundits and politicians
have endlessly analyzed possible scenarios, alienating
a public desperate for anyone who can offer hope of
an exit from the conflict with the Palestinians.
Nobody has illusions that new elections are the
answer.
"I think children in kindergarten can do a better
job running the country," said Mazal Cohen, a 65-
year-old retiree. "I voted for Bibi. He failed. I
voted for Barak. He failed. Perhaps if [U.S.]
President [Bill] Clinton has nothing better to do,
he can come and help us."
The despondency is not limited to Israelis in
the political center, many of whom put their
faith in Netanyahu in the 1996 elections, then
in Barak last year.
Yoram Faran, a 45-year-old camera importer,
has been a staunch supporter of Barak and his
peace policies.
Because of the regional unrest, however, his sales
have plummeted 25 percent in recent weeks.
"Elections are not going to change anything,
since nobody knows what to do," he says. "The
time has come for both failures to step aside and
allow new people to try to get elected."
Taking A Hard Line
Polls indicate that Netanyahu would trounce
Barak in a rematch, but it is still difficult to find
right-wingers convinced that the former prime
minister is capable of solving Israel's predicament
with the Palestinians.
"Maybe Bibi's return gives me a little more
hope," said Haim Pony, a chef at the Jerusalem
Tower Hotel and a staunch Netanyahu supporter.
POLITICS on page 28
If the Knesset amends the law so that he can run —
a process it started Wednesday — Netanyahu is
expected to try to reprise his old formula of political
inclusiveness, which some Israeli analysts have
referred to as "Bibi's rainbow coalition." His 1996
victory and subsequent coalition, which he hopes to
rebuild, were based on an alliance of the right, the
Orthodox and the Russians.
As part of that alliance-building, Netanyahu delib-
erately distanced himself Sunday from Barak's "civil
revolution," a package of reforms that Barak intro-
duced, and subsequently dropped, to counter
Orthodox rabbinical control of personal status laws
and of public Sabbath observance.
The plan included the introduction of civil mar-
riage, public transportation on the Sabbath, limits
on Orthodox draft-dodging and the dismantling of
the Religious Affairs Ministry.
For his part, Barak, in announcing his resignation
Saturday night, said he had been wrong to ease up
on the "civil revolution" program in hopes of woo-
ing the Orthodox parties. He pledged to resume that
program with renewed vigor.
The maneuvering between Barak and Netanyahu
over the "civil revolution" shows the importance of
the huge Russian vote to both candidates. Much of
the Russian community, which was crucial to Barak's
election in 1999, has swung back to the right.
Barak accepts the fact that few Orthodox Israelis
will vote for him, and he made no mention Saturday
of "One Israel," his present Knesset faction that joins
the moderate Orthodox Meimad Party to Labor.
For Netanyahu, who needs both the secular
Russian vote and the Orthodox vote, the balancing
act is trickier. He believes, he said, that issues of reli-
gion and state should be resolved by dialogue, not
by fiat. That had been his watchword during his pre-
miership, he said, and it would continue to guide
him if re-elected.
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