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Israel May Move From One Hardliner to Another
JERUSALEM, July 22 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Outspoken former Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu took the next step in his much-touted political comeback Sunday in a showdown with current Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, struggling after four months in power to contain the Palestinian uprising or intifada.
The two rivals met and squared off for the first time since Sharon's election in February as each addressed the 2,700 members of the right-wing Likud party's central committee in Tel Aviv.
Netanyahu tore into Sharon's policies to squash the intifada. "We have been told to use a policy of restraint, but this restraint has only provoked an escalation of terrorism and new demands from the international community for more restraint," Sharon's stirrer rival said.
"Eventually, it will bring us foreign observers that will not fight against terrorism and will hamper our army," he added.
Although Sharon is considered one of the most militant leaders of the Jewish state, and is responsible for dozens of massacres against Arab Muslims, he has so far failed to satisfy a growingly radical Israeli society. He had to fend off angry rabble-rousers who stridently heckled his approach toward the Palestinians.
"Yelling and shouting has never helped anyone deal with anything , certainly not terrorism and certainly not with me," Sharon said, as he stared down the restive crowd's call for the use of greater military force.
Before the evening's events, Likud members had toiled to put the best spin on the political rumble.
"There is no division within the Likud, but some criticism and some internal debate are natural practices of a democratic party like Likud," an extremist Likud MP and Netanyahu backer Yuval Steinitz told public television as party members gathered.
But Netanyahu has been fanning the flames of discontent, especially among his core base of right-wingers, extremists and hardliners, over Sharon's refusal to answer continuing Palestinian violence with an all-out army assault.
Last week he called Palestinian President Yasser Arafat "the head of the largest terror organization in the world" and said parliament should annul the 1993 Oslo peace accords which gave the Palestinians limited independence.
Few observers would have thought Sharon, a hawkish former general detested in the Arab world for his role in the 1982 massacre of Palestinian civilians and children in Lebanon, could find himself under attack for being too "soft."
But the 73-year-old has adopted a self-declared policy of "restraint" which he believes essential in securing support from the international community, seen here as overwhelmingly pro-Palestinian.
Israel indeed has drawn limited praise from abroad for not retaliating with a massive military attack to the ongoing Palestinian violence, most recently a suicide bombing last week that killed two Israeli soldiers.
Yet after winning in a landslide in February by presenting himself as the man to restore security in the midst of the Palestinian uprising, his bloody and violent response to the continuing violence has left many fanatic supporters disappointed.
Hardline ministers have boycotted his cabinet meetings, while his so-called "national unity" government, a right-left coalition cobbled together to unite Israel against the Palestinian uprising, is increasingly under threat.
Environment Minister Tzahi Hanegbi said Likud would have to work to keep Sunday's gathering - intended as a regular party meeting with the next election still two years away - from degenerating into a political free-for-all.
"No one has an interest in letting the meeting get out of hand," Hanegbi told the right-wing daily the Jerusalem Post.
No one except perhaps for Netanyahu, who used a divide-and-conquer strategy to become in 1996 the youngest man ever elected Israeli prime minister and the only Israeli premier born after the Jewish state, was founded in 1948.
After surviving a fraud and corruption investigation last year, the U.S.-educated Netanyahu has been politicking his way across the increasingly fanatic nation, notably visiting with the families of Jewish settlers slain by Palestinians.
The Maariv paper reported last week that Netanyahu's internal polling shows him easily winning a head-to-head contest with Sharon for the Likud leadership by more than 20 percent of the vote.
Meanwhile Sharon is downplaying any talk of a political challenge from the man he served as foreign minister.
"I am not contending with anyone," he said Saturday. "There are no internal party struggles at the moment."
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