OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, January 20 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - One week before legislative elections, Israel’s Labor party is experiencing its most serious crisis of the campaign, as the latest polls predicted Monday, January 20, it would be crushed by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s Likud.

Even more worrying, the survey carried by the Ma’ariv daily questioned Amram Mitzna’s leadership, by revealing that Labor’s ratings would be much better were it still headed by peace process veteran Shimon Peres.

However, Mitzna rejected suggestions emanating from within his own party that he step aside and let Shimon Peres run in his place.

“I came here to win, and I will stay on as chairman. Whoever doesn’t want to help should step aside and not be a disturbance,” he said, according to Israeli daily Ha'aretz.

Mitzna’s comments followed a stormy meeting of the Labor Party leadership in Tel Aviv Monday morning, during which Knesset member Weizman Shiri, who is 23rd on the party’s list of candidates, proposed replacing chairman Mitzna with Peres.

“If it’s going to happen,” Shiri told his party colleagues, “the initiative has to come from one person alone: Mitzna himself. He should step forward and say ‘I am not well enough known so, I plan to step aside for Peres’.”

Shiri is considered a supporter of former Labor Chairman Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, who Mitzna defeated in the primary elections.

Following Ben-Eliezer’s defeat, Shiri announced that he was leaving the Labor Party, but he changed his mind and decided to remain in the party at Mitzna's urging, according to Ha'aretz.

Shiri said that if Peres is so popular in the polls, it is proof that the public still believes in Labor’s policies. He suggested that the party spend the next few days examining whether Peres as party leader would indeed improve Labor’s chances in next Tuesday’s election.

The poll said that under the 79-year-old Peres, Labor would garner 29 seats in the next parliament, 10 more than its current score and only two short of the same poll’s prediction for Likud.

A poll carried by the top-selling Yediot Aharonot confirmed Labor’s poor performance, crediting the party with 19 or 20 mandates after the January 28 vote while Likud would pocket 32 or 33.

“The entire leadership of the party, including Shimon Peres, is standing as one man behind Amram Mitzna and will go all the way by his side,” a Labor spokesman told Agence France-Presse (AFP) to quell any rumors that an internal coup was looming.

For his part, Peres has remained silent over the latest speculation of yet another comeback.

Peres, a seasoned politician who has been prime minister twice already, went through a similar situation two years ago, just before Sharon’s crushing defeat of then Labor leader Ehud Barak.

With polls predicting Labor could win if it was led by Peres, the architect of the 1993 Oslo peace accords and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize jumped back into the election swamp the next year and challenged Barak for the head of the party with only a few weeks to go.

After several days of intense negotiations within the Israeli left, the secular left-wing party Meretz opposed Peres’ candidacy.

“I could have won these elections,” said a bitter Peres after Sharon’s landslide victory.

“It seems Labor has not fully recovered from this defeat,” said professor Eytan Gilboa, from Bar Ilan University’s political sciences department.

“One has to bear in mind that Peres has always been the king of opinion polls,” he told AFP, in reference to his unwavering popularity but repeated failures to win any election.

Sharon Riding High

Sharon’s chances appeared unlikely to be affected by soaring unemployment rates among Israelis

Only 14 percent of those polled said the economic crisis was likely to influence their vote.