Word: likud
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
JERUSALEM: As Israelis cast their ballots in the nation's most important election in decades, local exit polls showed Prime Minister Shimon Peres with the narrowest of leads over Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu. The polls, conducted by Israeli television stations, showed Peres leading by just one-to-four percent, which means the outcome cannot yet be predicted. At stake is Israel's course toward peace, pursued aggressively by both Peres and his Labor Party predecessor, Yitzak Rabin, who was assassinated last November by right-wing rabbinical student Yigal Amir. Netanyahu has come grudgingly to accept the accords granting...
...Thursday morning EDT. If the election remains very close, the final results may not be available for several days, as absentee ballots are counted. At the Labor party headquarters Wednesday night, Peres' supporters sounded optimistic, but were careful not to declare victory based on the exit polling data. At Likud headquarters, workers were subdued, but had not given up hope. Netanyahu's supporters are counting on the momentum he gained in the final week of campaigning, rising by as much as seven percentage points in some polls. Exit polling also led Israeli television station Channel 1 to predict significant losses...
...undecided directly. Labor officials wrote to each of 300,000 party members asking them to name any wavering voter they knew. The party has signed up 300 reserve army officers to phone personally each of the identified floaters to try to convince them to vote Labor. The Likud is adopting a similar program, and has created a Website on the Internet to try to reach and persuade the agnostic...
...Likud's swing toward moderation was greatly influenced by Yigal Amir's assassination of Rabin. "This is the one event that has tempered the campaign more than any other," says political scientist Aryeh Unger of Jerusalem's Hebrew University. "There's a postmortem charisma about Rabin that has pushed everyone toward the positions he espoused." Gadish, the floating voter, says the motives of Rabin's assassin account for some of his reservation about voting for Netanyahu. "I'd feel awful if Yigal Amir got what he wanted," he says...
...different views of life in Israel. Labor's spots glow with the benefits of the peace process. Happy, smiling Israelis are shown cavorting amid prosperity; youngsters speed down a highway in a yellow convertible while the Golden Arches of the newly arrived McDonald's beckon. The images in the Likud ads stress the flaws in the current peace: a bus decimated by a suicide bomber, a burning car hit by a Hizballah Katyusha...