Tel-Chai Nation

Via Barry Freedman's Galilee Blog, here's the Debka file report on current going-ons with the Likud leadership:

According to a Haaretz poll Tuesday, 47.2% of Likud members back Netanyahu as prime ministerial candidate compared with 33.2% for Sharon.

In a three-way race, MK Uzi Landau who declared his candidacy Tuesday would carry 17% of the party, leaving Netanyahu still ahead at 35% and Sharon trailing with 29%. Sharon’s two challengers would therefore collect a solid 52% together.

Sunday, August 7, an hour after Netanyahu stepped down as finance minister, DEBKAfile’s political analysts offered this prognosis:

Sharon may have lost his own Likud for good. A large segment broke away when he failed to abide by the majority consensus to drop the disengagement plan. Netanyahu’s defection from the government will strengthen the anti-Sharon opposition, especially if he is joined by any of the four Likud ministers who voted against the first phase of the Gaza evacuations.

The prime minister’s hold on government may prove more fragile than he thinks. There are already pressures to bring the date for an early election forward to the early months of 2006. Sharon’s bid for a third term as prime minister will no doubt be weakened by the final split in Likud and the ex-finance minister’s open challenge to his leadership in party and country. This contest will come to the fore in the Likud primaries ahead of parliamentary elections.

Well, not just that. At his age, which is about 77 by now, he is a tad old for the job, and what Israel's public wants and needs are leaders who're young enough to be properly effective for the job, and Sharon is way past that point by now. The same, in fact, goes for Labor's Shimon Peres, who's now past 80 years old.

Speaking of which,

Labor, which Sharon brought into the cabinet to bolster his evacuation plan, is in dire straits too, riddled with internal dissent and crippled by a five-way leadership contest. In the recent membership census conducted ahead of its primary, 90,000 slips were disqualified, of which 10,000 were found to be forgeries.

So not only were they were the main architects of the Oslo destruction, they're even guilty of internal corruption within the party. But aside from that, they're also quite passe by now as well.

Labels: Israel