TEL AVIV | Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni’s decision Sunday to seek new elections after failing to form a government sets up a race that includes two former prime ministers: Benjamin Netanyahu, a hard-liner who opposes territorial concessions to the Palestinians, and Ehud Barak, a former general who failed to get a peace deal in 2000.
Opinion polls suggest that Mr. Netanyahu, a critic of peace talks, would start the race as the front-runner.
Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud Party and other smaller groups on the right have benefited from a perception that recent Israeli pullbacks from the Gaza Strip and Lebanon have backfired by strengthening Islamic militants.
“It looks like the right-wing parties are going to have a majority,” said Abraham Diskin, a political science professor at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “The hope for unilateral solutions has gone. It doesn’t work. Where’s the tempting solution? It’s not there.”
A date for elections hasn’t been set, although analysts speculate that legislators want to hold the vote in February.
In the meantime, Israel’s political system will continue to operate in a holding pattern, ending already slim chances for a breakthrough in peace talks with the Palestinians or Syria - a goal sought by President Bush before he leaves office in late January.
Outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who remains at the Israeli helm legally until the next Israeli parliament confirms a new prime minister, has said that he’d continue to negotiate with Israel’s Arab neighbors.
But analysts say Mr. Olmert’s caretaker position prevents him from making concessions to re-energize stalled peace talks.
Mrs. Livni, who heads the centrist Kadima party and helped push peace talks along with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, also will seek the prime minister post.
She retains the image of an honest and scandal-free politician. But concerns about her relative inexperience have been reinforced after she gave up on efforts to rebuild Mr. Olmert’s parliamentary coalition.
With a financial scandal forcing Mr. Olmert out of office, a month of on-and-off negotiations led by Mrs. Livni to form a coalition broke down after the right-leaning religious party Shas balked.
“Is Livni a loser?” asked the headline on a front-page commentary of the left-leaning Ha’aretz newspaper. “She’s in a position of weakness.”
Mrs. Livni said that Shas’ budgetary demands were too costly and amounted to bribery, while lawmakers from the religious party said Mrs. Livni refused to give them assurances that Israel would not negotiate its control over Jerusalem in talks with the Palestinians.
“There are prices that others are willing to pay, but I’m not willing to pay just to be prime minister,” Mrs. Livni said. “The people will choose their leaders. I plan to win the elections.”
Mr. Netanyahu, who has focused on the threat posed by the growing power of Iran, is likely to repeat arguments that an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank or East Jerusalem would put Iranian allies like Hamas in control just miles from the heart of Israel.
Polls show that Mr. Barak’s Labor Party is running a distant third to Likud and Kadima. Mr. Barak is likely to tout his experience as a former prime minister and as the chief of staff of the army. But his left-leaning party has been crippled by the failure of peace talks and ever-present infighting.
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