Politics in Israel
In a major political development on Monday, Silvan Shalom, former Foreign Minister under PM Sharon, announced that he would not run for the Likud leadership. In a bitter speech against Bibi Netanyahu, he accused Bibi of deliberately bringing the date of the Likud primary vote for the leadership forward to September, so that there wouldn't be enough time for opponents to organize their campaigns. Having forced Shalom from the competition, Bibi sensing no real opposition (only the right wing candidate Moshe Feiglin is in the race) has now moved the primary date forward to Aug 14, so that he can have more time to focus on the General Election.
The date of this isn't known yet, but could be decided soon, once the revelations in the final Winograd Committee Report on the 2nd Lebanon War are published in a few months. This is expected to trigger the abandonment of the Olmert coalition Govt. by the Labor Party under Defense Minister Ehud Barak. The Govt. is then expected to collapse and new elections will be scheduled. In these elections it is expected that although Olmert will campaign for the Kadima Party, he will receive very little public support, and the Party will collapse. So Bibi regards Barak, the Head of Labor, as the major rival, and has already started to campaign against him.
One aspect of the campaign is that Barak, when he was PM in 2000, removed the IDF from Lebanon unilaterally in such a hasty manner, that it lead to Hizbollah moving up to the Israeli border and lead in time to the 2nd Lebanon War, which occured exactly a year ago. Barak also made major concessions in negotiations with Arafat, including dividing Jerusalem, that had not been approved by his Govt., and this lead to the second intifada. So Bibi has his campaign theme, everything bad that has occured to Israel in the past few years was the fault of Barak.
But, both Bibi and Barak were not exactly great successes as former PMs, so the campaigns are probably going to focus on their previous times in office and the mistakes that they made then. Who comes out of this with the least damage, and depending on how many votes Olmert can retain, will become PM again. So we are in for a rough campaign, its going to be Bibi or Barak, take your choice.
The date of this isn't known yet, but could be decided soon, once the revelations in the final Winograd Committee Report on the 2nd Lebanon War are published in a few months. This is expected to trigger the abandonment of the Olmert coalition Govt. by the Labor Party under Defense Minister Ehud Barak. The Govt. is then expected to collapse and new elections will be scheduled. In these elections it is expected that although Olmert will campaign for the Kadima Party, he will receive very little public support, and the Party will collapse. So Bibi regards Barak, the Head of Labor, as the major rival, and has already started to campaign against him.
One aspect of the campaign is that Barak, when he was PM in 2000, removed the IDF from Lebanon unilaterally in such a hasty manner, that it lead to Hizbollah moving up to the Israeli border and lead in time to the 2nd Lebanon War, which occured exactly a year ago. Barak also made major concessions in negotiations with Arafat, including dividing Jerusalem, that had not been approved by his Govt., and this lead to the second intifada. So Bibi has his campaign theme, everything bad that has occured to Israel in the past few years was the fault of Barak.
But, both Bibi and Barak were not exactly great successes as former PMs, so the campaigns are probably going to focus on their previous times in office and the mistakes that they made then. Who comes out of this with the least damage, and depending on how many votes Olmert can retain, will become PM again. So we are in for a rough campaign, its going to be Bibi or Barak, take your choice.
posted by Jack Cohen at 10:51 PM
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