Political contingencies

We have the unusual situation in Israel of a sitting Prime Minister who may
be ousted over political contingencies. Although Sharon can claim to have
pulled off a very successful disengagement from Gaza and Northern Samaria,
he nevertheless managed to alienate the right wing of his own Likud Party.
This may result in his not being able to avoid a vote in the Central
Committee over the leadership, that may result in Benjamin Netanyahu taking
over as Party leader and becoming its candidate in the next election.
Although Netanyahu disappointed many of the right wing by not splitting
sooner from Sharon, nevertheless he is favored as a likely winner against
Sharon in the internal Likud race. But, Sharon is more popular in the
country at large due to disengagement, particularly with the left wing. So
Sharon is given a lead in the overall race for PM again. But, in order to
exploit this he may need to split from Likud and form his own centrist
party.
But, there are other considerations. Although it has been mooted that Sharon
could engineer a coalition of three parties, consisting of the left wing of
Likud, the secular Shinui Party (if its leader Tommy Lapid agreed) and the
moribund Labor Party, this may now be in abeyance. On the left, there have
been several potential candidates for leadership of the Labor Party, and one
of them former PM Barak, has astonished everybody by giving up the
competition and throwing his support to Shimon Peres. This is explained
because Barak was given no chance of winning more than a few percent of the
Party vote. Peres is now 82, and as Barak had said the previous week, he is
a "loser" having lost in four previous attempts. But, he may have more
chance than any other possible Labor candidate. With this kind of support
Peres is known to be unlikely to give up his opportunity and support Sharon.
Also, Lapid has said that he sees no reason to merge Shinui, but that he
would rather form a coalition after the election. So that leaves Sharon
high and dry with no obvious existing party to support him. He is said to
have decided that if Likud deserts him for Netanyahu, rather than accept
such an ignominious defeat, he will form his own party from the rump of
Likud and contest the election that way.
However, no centrist party formed by previous political leaders has ever
managed to survive more than one election. In 1965 David Ben Gurion formed
the Rafi Party after being ousted as Labor Party leader, in 1977 Yigael
Yadin and others formed the Democratic Movement for Change, in 1999 a group
of former Likudniks and Laborites formed the Center Party that joined PM
Barak's coalition Government and Natan Sharansky formed Yisrael b'Aliya, but
all these centrist parties died after one election. Still for Sharon, at his
age (75), all he needs is to win one more election. But, could he do it
with a new, unknown party and at such short notice?
Sharon has received considerable international recognition for his
courageous disengagement policy. He has the support of the Bush
Administration, the UN and the Europeans have muttered nice words about him,
and even the Pakistani FM just met with FM Shalom in Istanbul, and smiled
and shook hands, although Pres. Musharraf stated that Pakistan will not
recognize Israel until a Palestinian State is declared. Nevertheless,
although Sharon's international repute is high, and he is no longer labeled
a "right wing extremist" by the media (and who remembers Sabra and Shatilla
now?) these people do not have the vote in Israeli elections.
So everything is contingent upon everything else, but one major suicide
bombing could totally alter the political picture, so it is impossible to
predict at this time what the eventual outcome will be.