|
Barak Needs "A Miracle"
JERUSALEM, Feb 1 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak is facing an uphill struggle for re-election after ruling out any further attempt to clinch an 11th-hour peace deal with the Palestinians.
Such a deal has been widely seen as Barak's only hope of reversing the downward trend in his poll ratings before the February 6th prime ministerial election.
Five days before Barak's election showdown against right-wing Likud leader Ariel Sharon, polls indicate no sign of turning in the embattled Israeli leader's favor.
Sharon, the famed Israeli warrior and security hawk, has promised to scale back any potential concessions made to the Palestinians by Barak.
"It would take some sort of miraculous event to change the results in one week," said pollster Hanoch Smith, explaining that not only is Sharon's two-digit lead of about 18% not narrowing, it is increasing.
"The trend [in Sharon's favor] is definite. It is spreading," Smith said. "The gap is increasing."
Smith, in his latest poll, found that 48% of Israelis polled supported Sharon, while 30% supported Barak. And Smith is not the only pollster predicting defeat for Barak in the February 6th election.
A poll in Israel's Maariv newspaper Tuesday found Sharon with a 20-percentage point lead over Barak, two percentage points more than the newspaper's poll predicted last week.
"There is little doubt that Sharon is going to win unless there is something very, very unusual that happens between today and the election. Something that borders on a miracle," said poll expert Ephraim Yaar, a professor at Tel Aviv University.
Yaar believes it is not so much that Israelis like Sharon, who engineered Israel's highly unpopular invasion of Lebanon in 1982, but rather a deep disillusionment with Barak.
There is significant also support for Shimon Peres to take Barak's place as the Labor Party's prime ministerial candidate, as reported in some news agencies. But Barak has vowed that he will not stand down.
Barak has indirectly accused Peres of sabotaging his campaign, saying: "This is not the first time this has happened in the Labor Party," a reference to former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin's labeling Peres a "tireless schemer" after his attempt to bring down the Yitzhak Shamir-led national unity government in 1990, an incident widely known as "the stinking maneuver."
Sharon's campaign has called Barak's statement "desperate," as members of Barak's own Labor Party acknowledged that he is too far down in polls, at too late a stage, for him to catch up. They pointed to polls showing that even if Barak steps down today in favor of Peres, Sharon would still likely win the election.
MK Silvan Shalom, Sharon's campaign chairman, said the Likud leader is prepared to take on Peres, saying: "All we would have to do is show the public the picture of Peres in Davos, sitting silently as [Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser] Arafat speaks out against us, for the public to understand that there is no difference between Peres and Barak."
Referring to Barak and Peres, Sharon told supporters in Ashkelon, "This couple has brought our country to the worst state it has ever known."
The man branded a warmonger by critics for orchestrating Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982 is running on a campaign platform that "Only Sharon can bring peace".
Senior Likud member Zalman Shoval said Sharon has been misunderstood and is really a man of peace seeking a better future for Israel.
"Sharon is a pragmatic patriot who has experienced more than anyone else in public life in Israel today...and appreciates two things - Israel's ability to defend itself and the importance of peace," he said.
Analysts assessing Sharon by his own statements believe that if he wins the election, he will take a much harder line on the Palestinians and offer them far fewer concessions.
Sharon has said that he will not be bound by whatever understandings Barak and Arafat reach.
Barak, who won a 1999 election race by the largest margin in Israel's history on a promise to make peace with the Palestinians and Syria, is about to lose the job by an even larger margin, pollsters predict.
"Israelis are really very disappointed with Barak both in terms of his policy and the way that he conducted the negotiations," Yaar said, explaining that many Israelis, even from the left wing, believe Barak offered too much to the Palestinians in peace negotiations and received too little back.
Many Israelis have opposed the Taba talks from the outset, believing Barak lacked the parliamentary and popular support to make deep concessions on questions central to Israel's national and religious identity.
Smith said that voter turnout rate of around 90% in past elections will drop on February 6th, hurting Barak even more as many Israelis who plan to boycott the election are doves who feel Barak failed them, but cannot stomach Sharon enough to vote for him.
Another crucial group, Israeli Arabs, are also expected to turn out in lower numbers than usual as many are frustrated with Barak over the deaths of 13 Israeli Arabs in violence resulting from the current Palestinian Intifada.
"People are very disappointed with Barak and that is true for almost any group of voters you have in mind. He disappointed the most dovish voters, as well as the most hawkish voters, religious voters and secular voters," Avraham Diskin, a professor at Tel Aviv University and an expert in public opinion, said.
"Barak disappointed too many people."
As the clock ticks down on what could be Ehud Barak's last days in 19 tempestuous months as Israel's Prime Minister, no comprehensive peace agreement with the Palestinians has been achieved either.
Analysts believe that failure to reach a deal soon could cause a flare-up of violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which could potentially turn into a prolonged war of attrition of low-intensity fighting, but also has the potential to spread into a regional conflict.
|
