Word: likud
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...former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "Bibi" has been preparing for a tilt at Barak since he was cleared of corruption charges in the fall. If the Knesset had been able to call general elections, as it was in the process of doing, Netanyahu could have challenged Likud leader Ariel Sharon for the right-wing spot to oppose Barak...
...once again for prime minister, but not at its own expense. The party's 17 seats give it a kingmaking - and -breaking - role in the fractious legislature, and that's powerful leverage for a minority party. But polls indicate that it would lose between four and six seats to Likud in a parliamentary election right now. Both parties draw support primarily from immigrants from Arab countries, and analysts predict that in an election focused almost exclusively on peace and security issues, there'd be a stampede of voters from the religious party back to the secular nationalists...
...that's not the way the Palestinian Authority works. I asked an official recently, do you have a team preparing for how to operate if you have to deal with a Likud government? He laughed, and said you have to understand that we don't prepare, we simply react. Watching the Israelis handle the current crisis, you have to say they're lucky to have the Palestinians as their enemies. Without the Palestinians, they'd be in real trouble...
...under which Barak called the election, or else to proceed quickly with the legislation to dissolve itself that was initiated two weeks ago. If parliament is dissolved, an election is required for both the top job and the legislature itself, in which Netanyahu believes he could lead the Likud party to victory...
...Barak may be banking on the legislators' being too attached to their jobs to pass that bill in time. Many of the smaller parties that share the Knesset with Likud and Barak's Labor party have little interest in a new parliamentary vote - most importantly, the powerful ultra-Orthodox Shas party, which grew substantially at Likud's expense in the last election, but which may shed some of those gains in an election fought in the heat of a Palestinian uprising. And Netanyahu also has to dispense with the Likud incumbent, Ariel Sharon, who has no plans to step aside...