Hawks dominate as Israel's Likud announces primary results (Roundup)

Dec 9, 2008, 12:13 GMT

   Tel Aviv - The Likud, the hardline opposition party currently tipped to win the February 10 Israeli election, announced its candidates for the Knesset Tuesday, and opponents immediately criticised the list as being dominated by right-wingers.

Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu had hoped the new personalities he had enticed into the party would receive enough internal support to allow him to paint the party as centre-right, but candidates known to be hawkish dominated the first 20 spots.

Likud caucus leader Gideon Sa'ar won the second spot on the party's list of parliamentary candidates, after Netanyahu himself, whose place as number one had already been secured in a separate contest for the party's leadership in late 2005.

Legislators Gilad Erdan and Reuven Rivlin made it to the third and fourth spots on the list, while former science minister Benny Begin, the son of late premier Menahem Begin, came in fifth.

   Former foreign minister Silvan Shalom, considered another internal rival of Netanyahu's, secured the seventh spot.

An extreme-right activist, Moshe Feiglin, who Netanyahu had hoped to sideline, came in at 20th place, virtually ensuring he will become a Knesset member after the elections.

Candidates supported by Feiglin also did well, with eight of them securing places in the first 35 spots, giving them a good chance of entering parliament.

Of the new 'stars' promoted by Netanyahu, only two of them - Begin, and former military chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon, both hardliners - were included in the 10 places.

Moderate former justice minister Dan Meridor, who returned recently to the party after walking out in 1998 in protest at Netanyahu's leadership, scored 17th place on the slip, but other candidates who Netanyahu hoped would give the party a more centrist image did not win realistic spots.

  'Today we elected a new leadership for Israel,' Netanyahu told party activists at an exhibition ground in Tel Aviv shortly after the results of Monday's vote were announced. The list chosen, he said, was the 'best team any party can present in our state.'

   Listing his priorities, Netanyahu said: 'First of all there is a global economic crisis which is threatening the jobs and savings of Israel's citizens and which requires a response.'

   'Daily security threats in the south and north' and a 'political crisis of trampling without direction,' also required a response, he said.

   He was referring to the Annapolis, Maryland peace process with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, which he has charged is going nowhere and is premature, as well as to rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip and the reported rearmament of Lebanon's Hezbollah along Israel's northern border.

Opinion polls published last month predicted the Likud could win as many as 34 mandates in the 120-seat Knesset, and beat the centrist, ruling Kadima party of Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, although the two are still running a close race.

   Feiglin's election to number 20 on the list was considered a blow to Netanyahu, who had acted against the ultra-nationalist leader of the 'Jewish leadership' movement entering parliament on behalf of the Likud, fearing a strong showing by him and his supporters will allow other parties to portray the Likud as ultra-right and would drive away potential centrist voters.

   Feiglin has charged that the Likud has drifted leftward from its ideological roots.

   He told Israel Radio Tuesday morning that his election to a spot on the Likud Knesset list was 'not a victory' over Netanyahu, but voters had supported him because he was loyal to the nation of Israel.

Commentators from other parties, however, were quick to criticise the Likud's election line-up, with Yoel Hasson, faction whip of the the ruling Kadima party, saying it was 'very right wing, very extreme' and would cause Israel 'to be stuck in an impasse.'

'The Likud has proven that it is not a prisoner of the extreme right wing, but rather it is the extreme right wing,' he said.

'The false presentation that Netanyahu tried to market with great skill in recent weeks, has basically evaporated. It is eminently obvious that the Likud yesterday elected an extreme right wing list,' legislator Ophir Pines-Paz of the Labour Party said.

He predicted that the hardliners in the party would frustrate Netanyahu to the extent that he would break away to form a new faction, as former prime minister Ariel Sharon did in late 2005, when he formed Kadima after Likud rebels constantly tired to block his moves with the Palestinians.