Jerusalem – Benjamin Netanyahu, the former Israeli prime minister who quit the Cabinet this month to protest Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, announced his candidacy for the Likud Party leadership Tuesday in a direct challenge to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
“I intend to lead the party to victory in the coming elections and form the next government,” Netanyahu said at an afternoon news conference that included a harsh critique of Sharon, the Likud leader.
“He abandoned the principles of the Likud,” said Netanyahu, 55, who was prime minister from 1996 until 1999 when he was badly beaten by Labor Party leader Ehud Barak.
“He chose a different path, the path of the left. We have to restore to the Likud and to the state the principles that Sharon trampled on.”
The announcement has been expected since Netanyahu resigned Aug. 7 as finance minister to register his opposition to Israel’s withdrawal from 25 settlements in Gaza and the northern West Bank, a plan he voted for several times in the Cabinet while supporting an unprecedented public referendum on the issue to block it.
Israel’s elections must be held before November 2006, but many political analysts here believe voting will be held next spring given the tumultuous state of the dominant conservative party.
Netanyahu’s first comments as a candidate gave a flavor of the bitter struggle ahead between two men who deeply dislike each other.
A day earlier, Sharon told Israel’s Channel 10 that “Netanyahu is a man who gets stressed.”
“In any situation of pressure, he gets stressed immediately,” Sharon said in an interview that was the talk of Israel’s commentators Tuesday. “He panics and loses control. I’ve seen him like that more than once, many times.”
The Likud showdown is the next step in a realignment along generational lines within Israel’s highly factional political system, precipitated by the Gaza withdrawal.
In the months before disengagement, Sharon, 77, turned to old friend and political rival Shimon Peres, head of the more dovish Labor Party, to shore up his government. The men have been active in Israeli public life since Israel’s pre-state period.
Some analysts believe they may now break from their disaffected parties and form a new alliance with Yosef Lapid, head of the secular, centrist Shinui Party, that could win enough seats in Israel’s parliament to form a government. The idea has been dubbed the “Big Bang” by Israel’s political commentators.
