tel aviv (jta) | Benjamin Netanyahu is back in the saddle and raring to retake the Israeli premiership — but it’s not clear if his Likud Party has enough strength to take him to victory.
Netanyahu whipped his opponents in Monday’s leadership primary, placing well ahead of his top rival, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom.
The victory helped rally a right-wing party still reeling from the defection last month of its previous chairman, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The fact that Netanyahu’s victory came as Sharon recovered in the hospital from a mild stroke only raised the stakes in a general election scheduled for March 28.
Before the primary, opinion polls showed the Likud trailing both Sharon’s new centrist Kadima movement and the center-left Labor Party. With Netanyahu at the Likud’s helm and Sharon’s health in doubt, however, the political prospects could change.
“If, God forbid, the blood clot had been 5 millimeters wide rather than 3 millimeters wide, then today we would have a Kadima Party without a leader and without direction,” said Shinui Party leader Yosef Lapid, referring to Sharon’s stroke.
“The Likud people have come along and said that, given this possibility, we should go for the man who has already served as prime minister,” Lapid said. But, he added, “it’s too early to praise Kadima and too early to bury the Likud.”
A scion of a well-known Zionist family, Netanyahu has had a high-profile but patchy history with the Likud. He made his name as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations in the early 1990s and went on to oppose the Oslo peace accords with the Palestinians.
Following a spate of Hamas suicide bombings, Netanyahu defeated Shimon Peres to become prime minister in 1996. He continued the Oslo process despite his misgivings and, under U.S. pressure, signed the Wye River Memorandum, which gave the Palestinian Authority control over much of the West Bank city of Hebron.
Netanyahu was defeated in 1999 general elections by Ehud Barak, and bowed out of the 2001 race that brought Sharon to power. He served for a time as Sharon’s foreign minister, becoming finance minister after Sharon was re-elected in 2003.