Word: ehud
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Today, Israelis will go to the ballot box to elect a new prime minister. There are now only two contenders for the premiership: Likud leader and incumbent Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu and Labor Party Chief Ehud Barak. Three other candidates, Centrist Yitzchak Mordechai, Israeli-Arab leader Azmi Bishara and hawk Zeev "Benny" Begin bowed out of the race in the 11th hour...
...that this time around, Benjamin Netanyahu is up against the electoral wiles of James Carville, the U.S. pollster who got Bill Clinton into office by bushwhacking a foreign-policy president with a deluge of domestic grievances and is now trying to do the same for Labor party leader Ehud Barak. Netanyahu had planned to scare up a majority by retreading his 1996 strategy of invoking a Palestinian menace -- his campaign is even running TV ads filled with gruesome footage from pre-1996 suicide bombings -- but voters don't appear to be taking the bait. Israelis have become accustomed, since...
...Labor's Ehud Barak is currently ten points ahead of Bibi Netanyahu in the polls, and will try to keep his lead by talking tough on peace. But Palestinian violence could turn things around. "Terror attacks work in Bibi's favor," says Beyer. "If the Palestinians want him out, they'll have to do their utmost to prevent new violence." But with the peace process on ice for the next five months, that may be a tall order...
...peace is not what Shahak is bringing to Israeli politics. The left-center Labor party is worried that the Rabin prot?g? will split the ?peace camp? by siphoning off centrist Labor members. That could force Shahak, Benjamin Netanyahu or Labor leader Ehud Barak to stake out extreme positions in order to attract enough votes to form a majority -- just the sort of frenzied coalition-building that left Netanyahu beholden to hard-liners against the peace process. But nobody?s panicking yet. ?Shahak has run very well in the polls, but it's entirely as an unknown entity,? reminds TIME Jerusalem...
...When they do come off, Netanyahu will face a strong challenge from the Labor party, currently led by Ehud Barak, who is a consistent critic of what Labor calls Netanyahu's abandonment of the peace agreements set in place by Yitzhak Rabin. But there also may be a challenge from popular Lt. General Amnon Lipkin-Shahak. The early line is that Netanyahu will push for new elections just before May 4, the day Yasser Arafat says he will declare an independent Palestinian state. His gamble: that such an ominous deadline will give enough Israelis cold feet to create a majority...