Campaign propaganda, Thursday, November 24, 2005

It’s official. The name of Ariel Sharon’s party is Qadima, meaning Forward, and not National Responsibility. Apparently, his chief advertising advisor, Reuven Adler, conducted some polls and focus groups that proved Qadima is the most attractive name for the party, which by law had to be formally named by today, a day after the Knesset presidium recognized the 14 MKs who broke away from the Likud as a new faction in the House.

The infighting inside the Likud is already at fever pitch and the actual elections for Likud leader are still almost a month away. Binyamin Netanyahu’s lead over Shaul Mofaz and Silvan Shalom has been shortened dramatically in the last 24 hours – but who believes polls nowadays? An Israel Radio poll showed Netanyahu taking only about 29 percent of the Likud vote and Mofaz right behind him with 25 percent, followed by Uzi Landau with 15 percent, Shalom with 12, and Moshe Faiglin, the radical Rightist, in the rear with 8 percent. At this rate the Likud will need a second round of voting to pick a leader and it is not at all clear that there will be any unity behind whoever is chosen.

Despite the apparent smooth sailing for Sharon – the infighting in the Likud only proves his point about how the ruling party has lost its relevance – it’s not all clear skies for him. For one thing, he lost a key ‘star’ he had been counting on to join him in the new party – Prof. Avishai Braverman, the charismatic outgoing president of Ben Gurion University of the Negev. Braverman, formerly of the World Bank, joined Labor this week to line up behind Amir Peretz. Also running in the Labor primaries for the party’s Knesset list is former consul-general Alon Pinkas.

Shalom’s people yesterday accused Peretz of orchestrating the heckling of a speech delivered by the foreign minister to the Sderot Conference on Society, an annual event at Sapir College, which is based in the Negev town where Peretz began his political career as mayor. The heckling did not force Shalom – who was trying rather unsuccessfully to make the pitch to a hostile audience that as a former resident of a Beersheba slum he knows what to do to solve poverty problems in Israel – off the stage, the way Finance Minister Ehud Olmert was forced off the same stage day before. And Peretz’s people deny that he had anything to do with the heckling. But there was no doubting the pleasure on Peretz’s face as the audience obeyed his appeal to allow the foreign minister to finish his speech.

There is no doubt that as long as Peretz can keep the campaign focused on social issues, he will gain in the polls, which already show him breathing down Sharon’s neck as they both dramatically outpace the fragmented Likud. But nobody wants to predict the subject of the election campaign, since too often in the past, Palestinian bombers have ended up the main issue – and on security matters there is no questioning of Sharon’s advantage in the race against any other contender.

Speaking of security, the Israeli offensive against Islamic Jihad, Hamas and other armed groups continues in the West Bank. Iyad Abu Rob, dubbed by Israel as the top Islamic Jihad man in Jenin and responsible for the Hadera mall bombing earlier this year that killed six, surrendered to IDF forces that had surrounded his hideout overnight. The Palestinians complain that Israeli security moves in the territories are constricting the election campaign to the new Palestinian Legislative Council, which will be elected on January 25th, two months before the Israeli elections. Everyone knows that the outcome of the PLC vote could have a significant effect on the outcome of the Israeli vote – if Hamas comes in as a dominant player, it will play into the hands of the hawks. If Hamas, however, takes less than 30 percent of the seats in the new PLC, it could play into the hands of the doves. The question many are asking nowadays is whether the doves include Sharon.

Yitzhak Rabin's Last Speech, which he delivered at the Tel Aviv peace rally on Nov. 4 1995

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