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Sharon Set for Likud Landslide, Members Start Voting
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| Sharon will crush his hawkish opponent and be a hot favorite to retain his seat as the country’s prime minister |
OCCUPIED
JERUSALEM, November 28 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Members of
Israel’s Likud party were choosing Thursday, November 28, between
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to
lead them into the January general elections, and probably head the
next government.
The
300,000 cardholders of the right-wing party started casting their
ballots in some of Israel’s 678 polling stations, which are due to
close around 2000 GMT, ahead of the first estimates, Agence
France-Presse (AFP) reported.
According
to opinion polls, Sharon will crush his hawkish opponent and be a hot
favorite to retain his seat as the country’s prime minister, against
the new dovish leader of the Labor party, Haifa Mayor Amram Mitzna.
The
crucial election, which already comes against the backdrop of a fresh
flare-up in the 26-month-old cycle of violence with the Palestinians,
coincided with a double anti-Israeli attack in Kenya.
Kenyan
government sources and witnesses said at least eight people were
killed in the blast at the Paradise Hotel, as 130 Israeli tourists,
who had just arrived in Mombasa on an Israeli airliner, were checking
in.
There
was no immediate claim of responsibility for the double attack, but
Israel announced it was dispatching a team of investigators and
doctors to Kenya.
Sharon
was casting his ballot for the Likud leadership in Sderot, near in
Negev desert ranch, when he was informed of the double attack but made
no official comment as news had not yet broken that Israelis were
among the victims of the hotel blast.
The
man who swept to power in March 2001 after five months of the
Palestinian Intifada against the Israeli occupation has led a hugely
successful campaign, crippling the aggressive approach of his hawkish
rival by fashioning himself an image of the “responsible
statesman” the country needs to handle a crisis.
“I’m
good in tough situations,” Sharon himself said in an interview
published by Ma’ariv Wednesday, November 27.
Netanyahu
tried to stalk the prime minister on the far-right, but failed to make
an impact by advocating the expulsion of Palestinian President Yasser
Arafat or opposing the creation of a Palestinian state.
Meanwhile,
Sharon temporarily dropped his tough-talking habits and moved to the
center to play the role of the government’s leading moderate
following last month’s Labor withdrawal from his national unity
government.
However,
the Israeli army showed no sign of easing its sweep of the occupied
territories Thursday, as five brothers, including four members of the
Islamic resistance Hamas group and one member of the Islamic Jihad
were abducted near Bethlehem, sources on both sides said.
The
men, all of them on Israel’s wanted list, were only the latest to be
netted by the army, which invaded the southern West Bank town a week
ago.
Six
more activists, students belonging to Islamic Jihad and the Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine, were arrested in Jenin in the
north of the West Bank, Palestinian sources said.
Five
Palestinians were killed by Israeli army Wednesday, as violence swept
across the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
In
the northern West Bank, a Palestinian civilian was shot dead by
Israeli troops in a Nablus refugee camp while a teenager was killed by
Israeli soldiers in Jenin.
Also
in Jenin, two senior Palestinian activists died when their house
exploded in an Israeli assassination.
But
the Israeli army denied any involvement, and radio suggested it was a
“work accident”, the term used by Israel when would-be bombers are
killed or injured by their own explosive charges.
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