Déjá vu, Netanyahu, Wednesday, August 31, 2005

For the last four years, the conventional wisdom in Israel has been that the country has become a one-party democracy, with the Likud representing 'the people' and Labor forever doomed to deteriorate into a minor opposition party. That same conventional wisdom has said that whenever Sharon leaves the political arena, the next Likud leader will be the next premier, and the next Likud leader will be Binyamin Netanyahu. But the conventional wisdom did not take into account Netanyahu's personality, which right now appears to be the real issue of the nascent election campaign.

Just in case anyone had forgotten what his three years in the prime minister's office wrought, his 'press conference' yesterday – a campaign rally at Tel Aviv's Journalists' House, to which reporters were invited – was a reminder of everything that motivated literally hundreds of thousands of Israelis in 1999 to volunteer to bring him down.

There was the incessant distortion of the truth in practically every statement, the combination of pomposity and salesmanship in almost every pronunciation, either extremely cynical or extremely unaware dissonance between his promises and behavior – as he described how he was distressed that 'my country is considered corrupt,' behind him, on the podium, sat a row of second and third tier MKs from the Likud rebels, almost all facing police investigations.

His promise to rid the country of corruption sounded rather hollow coming from the man whom the police twice recommended be prosecuted while he was a serving premier, and only the cowardice of then-attorney general Elyakim Rubinstein stood between Netanyahu and a defendant's seat in a courtroom. His ad hominem attacks on Sharon sounded very familiar, almost precisely what Netanyahu said about Shimon Peres in 1996.

Politicians, it's often said, thrive because of the short term memory of the voters. Perhaps. Netanyahu's strategy is so far obvious – win back the support of the far Right, 'the oranges.'

Once he has that Karl Rove-like base firmly in his pocket with rhetoric such as today's about building housing for 'tens of thousands of Jews' between Maale Adumim and Jerusalem, turn toward the Center (not the Left, per se), with promises to follow the roadmap. It's a method that worked for him in 1996, when he squeaked past Peres by running a campaign of fear of terrorism and 'dividing Jerusalem' that he blamed on the Oslo accords, and at the last minute announced he would abide by Oslo -- which he immediately proceeded to dismantle once in office.

Of course, the antipathy he generated yesterday in the press to his candidacy – and it was not merely a consensus this morning, but practically an axiom in the press that his performance yesterday was precisely the kind of show that the general public hated so much by the end of his three years in office – might not matter too much to the rank and file Likud voters who hate the press as 'Leftist' and are said to be determined to get rid of Sharon.

But the rank and file Likud voters seem confused – polls this morning in Yedioth Ahronoth said the rank and file party members do not want to throw out Sharon and don't think Netanyahu has matured into a premier-worthy candidate. But a poll in Maariv said the opposite.

Whichever – it is much too early to rule out the possibility of Sharon beating back the Netanyahu forces inside the Likud, and thereby holding onto the party leadership at least a while longer. While Netanyahu was performing today at Area E1 – the narrow road between Maale Adumim, the Israeli-Jewish suburb east of East Jerusalem – promising he will build massive new housing projects there, and charging Sharon would divide Jerualem, the same charge he used against Peres in 1996, Sharon was doing the tedious political work of meeting with central committee members to find out where they really stand. He's gambling that enough of the central committee will come to its senses by late September, and vote against a proposal for early primaries for the party leadership.

Nor would it be smart to count out the Labor Party. Ehud Barak was the only person who could steal the limelight from Netanyahu yesterday and he did so, with a surprising announcement that he would throw his support to Peres as leader of Labor, if the other candidates did so.

Arguing that Labor Party unity would do wonders for the party compared to the all-out war inside the Likud, Barak's newfound support for Peres was obviously self-serving, since the Labor Party polls right now show Barak and Matan Vilnai lagging far behind Peres, who is closely followed by Amir Peretz.

This morning, only Peretz sounded firmly against dropping his campaign and hitching his wagon to Peres. Binyamin 'Fuad' Ben-Eliezer mumbled something about seeing which way things would go, Vilnai tried to ignore the call to back Peres, focusing instead on Barak pulling out of a race he was anyway going to lose, and Peres, the old man of Israeli politics, said with no little self-satisfaction, that Barak's step 'was in the right direction.' Considering the polls show that if Netanyahu heads the Likud, Peres at the head of Labor has a good chance to win the elections, Barak's move made a lot of political sense. But as has been the case for some time, logic is not the main impulse by which Israeli politics operates.

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