Likud

RISHON LE ZIYYON, Israel -- The Likud party faithful waited more than an hour in a gaily decorated hall for the arrival of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. They chanted his nickname with the fervor of soccer fans. They sang his praises as a defender of Jerusalem. During the ruckus, they were told of the stakes in the May 17 election."You can imagine what will happen if the left comes to power. Not only will you and I become second-class citizens, we'll pay a heavy political price," said Hananya Gibstein, the former mayor of this Tel Aviv suburb.

BENJAMIN Netanyahu is leaving Israeli politics as stormily as he entered. His departure from the Knesset, as well as from the leadership of Likud, gives that party a chance to recover from its election disaster. Much remains to argue about in coming months, but Mr. Netanyahu won't be the issue.No politician is washed up at 49, though.Mr. Netanyahu won't be far away. If events sour under the prime ministry of Ehud Barak, with security compromised or terrorism renewed, Mr. Netanyahu will retain told-you-so appeal.

THE BEST WAY to keep peace as an option in Israel's spring election is to ensure that momentum is maintained to implement the Wye Plantation agreement.That calls for Washington, distracted with its own affairs, to lean on the caretaker government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Palestinian Authority government of Yasser Arafat to keep their commitments.The May 4 deadline for agreement on final status cannot be met. In spite of this, nothing should be done to prejudice Israel's May 17 election.

THE BEST WAY to keep peace as an option in Israel's spring election is to ensure that momentum is maintained to implement the Wye Plantation agreement.That calls for Washington, distracted with its own affairs, to lean on the caretaker government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Palestinian Authority government of Yasser Arafat to keep their commitments.The May 4 deadline for agreement on final status cannot be met. In spite of this, nothing should be done to prejudice Israel's May 17 election.

AS THE sun sets on the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli political landscape begins to resemble the final battle scene in "Richard III" -- the field lost, all the king's followers and nobles defecting and the king, badly wounded and ailing, desperate for a means of holding together his divided kingdom.The sight last week of Mr. Netanyahu being jeered by both left and right as he called for new elections made clear the extent of the devastation. With his own ministers turning against him, an unprecedented assault from his own ideological breeding ground on the right and ringing indignation on the left, he straddles the chasm between left and right, with no sure foothold on either side.

JERUSALEM -- A group of Labor and Likud legislators who have been working to find common ground for future negotiations with the Palestinians have joined in proposing that the Palestinians be eventually granted a self-ruled "entity" and that no Jewish settlers be forcibly uprooted from the West Bank or Gaza Strip.While the proposals have not been officially approved by either party and are not likely to be, the plan was the first to be prepared jointly by members of the two major parties.

LONDON -- A short 2 1/2 years ago, then foreign minister of Israel Shimon Peres observed: "I don't think we have in the Middle East a process of peace. We have a war for peace, because it calls unfortunately for victims and casualties."Probably, not even in the most pessimistic moments of this melancholic man, did he foresee that soon after he spoke he'd witness the triple whammy of the murder of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the subsequent victory at the polls of Likud's dTC party leader Binyamin Netanyahu and the effective pacing of negotiations under the Oslo accords by terrorist elements on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides.

JERUSALEM -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may be threatened with criminal indictment, but he defiantly told political supporters yesterday that his government will be in power after the turn of the millennium.In a speech before Likud coalition members in Tel Aviv, the prime minister did not speak directly to the political corruption charges being considered against him.But he alluded to his innocence when he said confidently: "Truth will win. I'm confident truth will win."We are staying at the place where the people and history have determined us to be," Netanyahu said in the face of calls by opposition leaders that he step down.

After some traditional Middle East bargaining, Israel and the Palestinian authority recently initialed a protocol for the redeployment of Israeli forces from the West Bank city of Hebron. The accord, which was delayed not only by haggling but also by terrorist attacks in Israel and by the security concerns of the ruling Israeli Likud bloc, is a positive step toward peace. At the same time, while the Hebron issue is a done deal on paper, it, and some of its consequences, remain problematic for several reasons.

JERUSALEM -- A battle over Jerusalem's future is being waged on a pine-forested mountain that rises from a placid valley at the southeastern edge of the city.Israelis call the place Har Homa, "the mountain wall." It is to be the site of a new neighborhood they say will anchor the Jewish presence in an Arab area of town. Palestinians call the mountain Jabal Abu Ghunnaim, "the father of the victorious." They view the proposed Jewish settlement as another attempt to erode the Arab population of the city and a violation of the 1993 peace accords.

JERUSALEM -Israeli voters delivered a split decision in national elections yesterday, sparking competing claims by backers of opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni over who will be the next prime minister. Voters appeared to give Livni's Kadima Party, which favors negotiations with the Palestinians, a slight and unexpected edge over Netanyahu's Likud, which has been critical of peace talks, according to nearly complete returns and exit polls. But the overall shift in Israel's parliament, the Knesset, was sharply to the right.

JERUSALEM -- Ehud Olmert's centrist Kadima party won the largest number of seats yesterday in Israel's parliamentary elections, ensuring that Olmert will become prime minister and be able to pursue his plan to give up some Jewish settlements in the West Bank and establish the country's permanent borders. Kadima's victory was muted by the party's winning fewer seats than polls had projected. But it broke the monopoly on leadership held since the country's founding by the center-left Labor Party and its predecessors, and by the right-wing Likud, the party Olmert left to join Kadima.

JERUSALEM -- On the eve of Israel's parliamentary elections, the large lead held by Kadima, the centrist party founded by Ariel Sharon before he was felled by a stroke, appeared to be eroding, final public opinion surveys indicated. Kadima was still expected to win the biggest share of seats in the 120-member Knesset in today's vote, but a smaller-than-hoped-for margin of victory would complicate efforts to assemble a stable governing coalition. The vote pits Kadima, led by acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, against the left-leaning Labor Party and the conservative Likud, led respectively by Amir Peretz and former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

JERUSALEM --Ehud Olmert, the acting prime minister and the leader of the new Kadima Party, has been renamed Smolmert in an effort to label him dovish and left-wing (smol is Hebrew for left). Benjamin Netanyahu of Likud, the former prime minister known as Bibi, is pictured as shifty-eyed, bloated, anxious and untrustworthy, giving himself pep talks ("I can do this; I'm the Bibi"). Amir Peretz, the Moroccan-born leader of the Labor Party, is portrayed as an inexperienced socialist simpleton, with Israel's Russian-born voters reminded of how much he looks like Stalin.

NETANYA, Israel -- Dany Himy, owner of a produce shop in this sunny seaside city, doesn't care much anymore if there's peace with the Palestinians. He is not even sure it's possible. What he wants is separation from them, to be accomplished by completing Israel's wall and fences in the West Bank and evacuating most Jewish settlements there. "They are there," says Himy, pointing out the front of his shop toward the Palestinian villages 10 miles away in the West Bank. "We are here." In many ways, Himy's wish for a formal divorce from the Palestinians reflects the prevailing feeling in Israel in the last weeks before national elections March 28. After failing to secure a lasting peace agreement and achieve a clear military victory over Palestinian militants, Israelis seem willing to try something different - a path that may not lead to a peace but may bring some quiet.

JERUSALEM -- Ehud Olmert, who took over as acting prime minister last night after Ariel Sharon was hospitalized, has been the Israeli leader's steadfast ally as the pair shifted over time from ideological hard-liners to advocates for withdrawing from the Gaza Strip and part of the West Bank. The 60-year-old vice prime minister, a lawyer who served as Jerusalem's mayor for a decade, was among the core of Likud Party members to accompany Sharon in November when the prime minister abandoned the conservative party to found a centrist movement called Kadima, Hebrew for "forward."

JERUSALEM -- Two days after suffering a minor stroke, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was released yesterday from a Jerusalem hospital and said he was eager to get back on the job. Smiling broadly but looking somewhat drawn, Sharon told reporters as he left Hadassah University Medical Center that the stroke would not impair his performance. In brief remarks, he thanked doctors and said he was moved by concern expressed by Israelis. "Now I must hurry to get back to work and move forward," Sharon said.

JERUSALEM -- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was hospitalized last night after suffering a minor stroke, hospital officials said, adding a fresh element of uncertainty to a tumultuous political season in Israel. Officials at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem said the 77-year-old prime minister was awake and speaking with family members and aides after undergoing tests. Officials said that, contrary to initial reports on Israeli television, he did not lose consciousness. Sharon remained in control of the government and had received a military briefing at his bedside, said his spokesman, Raanan Gissin.

SDEROT, Israel -- From the time he could first vote, Shimon Sinai has put his trust in Israel's leading right-wing party, the Likud, believing that Israel needed to be tough with the Palestinians, be strong on defense and embrace free markets. But when Israel holds parliamentary elections in March, the 42-year-old owner of a soup kitchen for the poor in this hardscrabble southern Israeli town plans to cast his vote for the newest, most talked-about political star in Israel, the Labor Party's Amir Peretz.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon dropped a political bombshell by leaving the party that he helped to form in 1973, shattering the political status quo in Israel. Mr. Sharon made the move because he wants his legacy to be that he shaped the borders of Israel in any two-state agreement with the Palestinians. He believes the Likud party apparatus - still roiling from Gaza disengagement - constrains his current policy and would restrict future policy initiatives toward the Palestinians since the Likud Central Committee, which is composed of more hawkish activists, and not Mr. Sharon would determine the next parliament list.