Despite doing things like nursing the Israeli Air Force into existence and being smarter than most other people, Shimon Peres is the perennial loser of Israeli politics. Even symbolic races like the one for President a few years ago – a race that he was heavily favored to win – always turn against him at the last moment. So nothing is assured today as the Labor party votes for a party chairman, but things seem to be going well:
Ex-prime minister Ehud Barak and current Science Minister Matan Vilnai have withdrawn from the race, throwing their support to Peres. Peres now leads in opinion polls, but has been many time defeated in the past despite favorable polling numbers.
On one side, a relatively centrist list of young and old stars led by Shimon Peres which will quietly continue working within the government to moderate the far right of the Likud until the regular November elections. On the other side, a bunch of kids led by union hack Amir Peretz who will drop out of the government, trigger new elections, be blamed for triggering those elections, and lose. How stupid are Labor primary voters – stupid enough to have trotted out super-lefty Avram Mitzna as their last candidate in the middle of a war, and stupid enough that Peres could still lose this time.
The Labor primary could be beside the point, however, if Sharon is really serious about using the massive popularity of the disengagement to launch and win another election:
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon wants to advance the election so he can return to power and decide where Israel’s final borders are going to be, his advisers told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday. They said that although Sharon was currently saying that, after disengagement, the internationally brokered road map was the only diplomatic plan on the table, he had not ruled out a unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank in the long run.
Gil Hoffman has an article on the pros and cons for Sharon of an early election that you absolutely, positively must read if you want to have a clue about what’s going on in Israeli politics.
