Israeli Elections

SPECIAL REPORT

Prime Minister II?

Netanyahu: The one to beat on Feb. 10.

Leslie Susser
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Jerusalem

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n the fourth day of the recent
war in Gaza, Likud Party leader
Benjamin Netanyahu hurried
from one Jerusalem studio to another,
doing more than a dozen TV interviews
with networks from Hong Kong to New
York within the space of 12 hours.
In each case, Netanyahu asked the host
from where he or she was broadcasting,
and then asked the question: What would
your government do if your city came
under rocket fire?
Netanyahu, the leader of the opposi-
tion, had met the day before with Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert and agreed to
take on a major role in explaining Israel's
war against Hamas to the world. Just six
weeks away from the February election,
Netanyahu knew his bipartisanship would
go down well with Israeli voters.
But just to make sure they noticed, he
invited Israel's Channel 2 TV news to doc-
ument his contribution to the war effort.
The ploy — playing the statesman who
is above politics while actually election-
eering — helped Netanyahu, the front-
runner in the race for prime minister,
stay in the public eye. It kept Likud up in
the polls, even though Netanyahu's main
political rivals — Kadima's Tzipi Livni, the
foreign minister, and Labor's Ehud Barak,
the defense minister — were the ones
actually conducting the popular war.
Then, when the cease-fire was
announced Jan. 17, Netanyahu played his
trump card, turning against the govern-
ment and accusing it of wasting a golden
opportunity to topple the Hamas regime
in Gaza. The new message resonated with
many Israelis across the country, and the
few seats Netanyahu had lost during the
war came back with interest.
Polls taken in the first week after
the war showed the margin between
Netanyahu's Likud and Livni's Kadima
widening from a near tie to as many as
eight or nine seats in Likud's favor.
Netanyahu's tough line on Hamas reso-
nates in an Israel that has moved sharply
to the right, as peace efforts and disen-
gagement efforts have proven fruitless.
Both the Oslo process launched in 1993

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February 5 • 2009

A campaign poster for Benjamin Netanyahu is displayed on the side of a Jerusalem bus.

and the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza are
widely seen as major failures. The Oslo
process and its culmination, the 2000
Camp David summit at which Yasser
Arafat rejected a wide-ranging peace deal
from Barak, is seen as having led to the
wave of terrorism of the second intifada.
Ariel Sharon's 2005 disengagement from
Gaza is seen as having led to Israel's show-
down with Hamas.
On the Palestinian issue, Netanyahu
presents a two-pronged approach:
Economic sanctions and force if necessary
to smash Hamas — a tougher line against
Hamas than Kadima or Labor — and
slowing down the peace process with
President Mahmoud Abbas' Palestinian
Authority in the West Bank.
Netanyahu advocates first creating an
"economic peace" with Palestinians in
the West Bank as a necessary stage for
creating conditions for political peace. He
promises to use his economic expertise
to help bring prosperity to the West Bank

that ultimately will pave the way for peace.
Netanyahu also takes a tough line on
Syria, insisting that there is no way his
government would agree to withdraw
from the Golan Heights.
His Achilles heel as a candidate is
the fear among Israelis of a confronta-
tion between a Netanyahu-led govern-
ment unwilling to move on either the
Palestinian or Syrian tracks and the new
Obama administration in Washington.
President Obama is keen on solving the
Palestinian issue to improve America's
standing in the Middle East and prying
Syria away from the radical Iranian axis
through an Israeli-Syrian peace deal that
entails returning the Golan.
Livni is playing on this fear, arguing
that when Netanyahu was prime minister
in the 1990s he ran afoul of the Clinton
administration, and likely will do so again
with Obama. If Netanyahu forms a gov-
ernment with the far right and refuses to
move on peace, she warns that there will

be an unavoidable rift with the United
States, and Israel could find itself increas-
ingly isolated in the international com-
munity.
One of Netanyahu's problems as prime
minister in the 1990s was the defection
of powerful people around him, includ-
ing Benny Begin on the right and Dan
Meridor on the left. Now, to show that he
has regained their respect, he has recruit-
ed both, as well as several "stars," includ-
ing former army Chief of Staff Moshe
(Boogie) Ya'alon.
Netanyahu also has waged a determined
fight to place himself at the center rather
than on the far right of the Israeli political
spectrum. He forced Moshe Feiglin, whose
far-right Jewish leadership movement
advocates transfer of Israeli Arab citizens
out of Israel, well down the Likud list, to
the 36th slot. Netanyahu also has given the
moderate Meridor a prominent role in the
campaign. II