A question of timing

Israel

Sep 1st 2005 JERUSALEM
From The Economist print edition

Binyamin Netanyahu launches his leadership bid

WHY now? Every time Binyamin (“Bibi”) Netanyahu does something these days, people ask the same question. Last month he quit as finance minister, in protest against Israel's “disengagement” from the Gaza strip, just a week before it took place. And this week he launched a bid for the leadership of the Likud party and eventually of the country, months before he needed to.

Mr Netanyahu was prime minister from 1996 to 1999, and most Israelis guess that one day he will be again. A general election is due by November next year, and a poll last week in the Haaretz newspaper showed he would easily beat Ariel (“Arik”) Sharon, the incumbent, in a primary held among Likud's 152,000 members. Even if Mr Sharon's fortunes change by then, his age—77 to Mr Netanyahu's 55—means that time is on the younger man's side; he could easily wait through another government, and in Israel's dull political firmament he has few real challengers.

Yet he has chosen now to harness the Likud membership's fury with Mr Sharon, who reneged on an election promise to hold on to Gaza, then forced the plan through against the no votes of most of the party in an internal referendum and one-third of its members of the Knesset, Israel's parliament. Though a party leadership ballot is not due until April, the central committee, due to meet on September 25th and 26th, is expected to advance it—perhaps to as soon as November. That would almost certainly trigger early elections. It would be the first time an Israeli party in power voluntarily cuts short its mandate.

That speaks of its sense of betrayal by Mr Sharon. Mr Netanyahu is reaching out to the right, trying to convince it that the betrayal will continue and that only he will safeguard the party's conscience and values. Touring Maale Adumim, the biggest Israeli settlement in the West Bank, he accused Mr Sharon of not doing enough to create an unbroken strip of settlement between it and Jerusalem, which both Israelis and Palestinians cherish as their capital. Meanwhile Mr Sharon, who was also expected to swing rightwards after the Gaza pull-out to mollify his critics, is instead adding grist to Mr Netanyahu's mill. While painting his challenger as irresponsible, whimsical and prone to panic, Mr Sharon now says that any future peace deal with the Palestinians would indeed mean giving up more West Bank settlements.

But nobody has ever doubted that by this he means outlying ones, not the big blocks like Maale Adumim, now almost a suburb of Jerusalem protruding eastwards into the West Bank. (He even got a small boost this week when the residents of an isolated West Bank settlement asked to be relocated into Israel for their own safety.) And his rubbishing of Mr Netanyahu—who as an energetic, reformist finance minister somewhat repaired his reputation after an ineffectual stint as prime minister—will resonate. But having led the Likud's Knesset rebellion against the Gaza pull-out, at the last minute Mr Netanyahu voted for it, and allocated the budget for compensating the evacuated Gaza settlers without demur. He threw a few spanners in the works later on, but resigned only when the pull-out looked like a virtual fait accompli.

So why now? Perhaps going earlier would have jeopardised his reforms, and going later would have lost him any chance of appealing to the right. Likewise, announcing a leadership bid now, in the wake of the Likud poll, may have been an attempt to catch Mr Sharon at his weakest.
Still, to most people it makes Mr Netanyahu look like a naked political opportunist. And the Gaza pull-out went unexpectedly fast and smoothly, boosting Mr Sharon's support. What is more, though paid-up Likud members are against Mr Sharon, a poll in Yediot Aharonot, Israel's most popular daily, finds that Likud voters and the electorate at large would both choose him over Mr Netanyahu by a big margin. He will also enjoy the fawning of world leaders at a UN summit this month, returning home just before the Likud sets a date for the primaries.

That presages a tense showdown. Mr Sharon could run in the primary, hoping that a lot of Likud members will swallow their anger and vote for him as most likely to get the Likud into government. Or he could split the party, form his own with the dissenters and get into government with a centrist coalition including Labour and Shinui, the leftist parties that backed him over the disengagement plan. But that is a gamble too. There is no disengagement plan now, and nothing else visible that would hold such a ragbag coalition together. Moreover, the Likud might outsmart him by calling a no-confidence motion in the government, forcing an election before he has a chance to form a party.

For Likud members, this is a moment of truth. Losing Mr Sharon either way could mean political suicide. Will the instinct for self-preservation trump the desire for revenge or the need to maintain values; and do those values really include holding on to every West Bank settlement? Much will depend, however, on how things go in Gaza. Despite several recent killings of Palestinians by Israeli civilians and soldiers, the militant groups in Gaza have been muted in their response. (A cell from the West Bank was said to have been responsible for a botched bus-bombing in southern Israel.) Hamas, the main Islamist party, is expected to try to keep things that way at least until January, when Palestinian elections will be held. The level of violence in the coming months will determine how far any would-be Israeli leader has to lean to the right. Either way it will be a test of nerve—and Mr Sharon's is unquestionably the steelier.

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