Word: likud
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...writing this letter in reference to the Feb. 6 op-ed entitled “Now Playing: Hamas,” which I found both disappointing and misleading in its comparison of Hamas’ electoral victory to that of the Israeli Likud party...
...neither unprecedented nor reason to panic.This abrupt political upset in the Middle-East is not unprecedented in nature and scope; the general election rivaled, in its ferocity and politically unsettling outcome, the Israeli political epic of 1977. In 1977, the Israeli Labour party lost the general elections to the Likud for the first time in the history of the state of Israel. The disciples of David Ben-Gurion, the founding father of the Jewish State, lost to the descendants of Vladimir Jabotinsky, the Zionist revisionist who articulated the Iron Wall theory and sought to include Transjordan in the borders...
...plan for every eventuality in the Middle East except for this one." Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he would not negotiate with a Palestinian government "if even part of it is an armed terrorist organization calling for Israel's destruction." The leader of the right-wing Likud Party, Benjamin Netanyahu, who trails Olmert in the polls before Israel's elections in late March and describes the Gaza Strip and West Bank as "Hamastan," called for economic sanctions on the Palestinian Authority...
Already Likudniks are saying disengagement in Gaza has caused the chaos and will weaken Israel's security. "We hear reports of an al-Qaeda presence in Gaza now and about high-powered explosives being smuggled in through Egypt," a leading Likud security expert told me. "The question is, How would Sharon have reacted to the deteriorating situation? Would he have moved on and disengaged from the West Bank? I think there is a discussion to be had about what Sharon's real legacy should...
There is another, more personal challenge facing Olmert. He and Netanyahu, along with Dan Meridor and Benjamin Begin, were once called the four princes of Likud--and of them, Olmert was regarded as the least likely to succeed, a smart inside operator but a politician, not a statesman. He will have to perform in the spotlight now, and inside players tend to wilt when shoved onto center stage. Netanyahu has become Israel's Richard Nixon--his negatives are stratospheric, but he is a tough competitor, a plausible Prime Minister. Olmert will have another opponent as well: the memory of Ariel...