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November 14, 2003/Cheshvan 19 5764, Vol. 56, No. 8
D.C. visits key to Israeli succession?
RON KAMPEAS
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
WASHINGTON - Three possible candidates to succeed Ariel Sharon spent the week cultivating a constituency crucial to anyone seeking to become prime minister of Israel: the U.S. government.
One attribute Bush administration officials were seeking was a willingness to advance Israel-Palestinian peace talks.
Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Education Minister Limor Livnat all were in Wash-ington this week for long-planned visits - but the coincidence of their arrival at a time when Sharon is in political trouble at home inevitably raised the issue of their future ambitions.
"There can be no doubt that they have that in mind," Israeli political analyst Yossi Alpher said of hopes for the premiership. "All three are serious contenders."
An ability to work well with Washington is considered an electoral asset in Israel. Discord between Washington and Jerusalem helped scuttle re-election bids by incumbents Yitzhak Shamir in 1992 and Netanyahu in 1999.
That's especially true now that Sharon's popularity has suffered from a combina- tion of influence-peddling allegations against his sons, the economic situation in Israel, and increasing dis-quiet in the army with per-ceived hard-line policies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Livnat was scheduled to meet Nov. 13 with U.S. Education Secretary Rod Paige and then address the conservative Hudson Institute about the intersection between education and incitement to terror - a topic dear to conservatives in Israel and to some U.S. Jews whom Livnat might target for future fund raising.
Netanyahu also was burnishing his statesman's credentials, meeting Nov. 13 with President Bush's national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice. The showpiece of his visit was to be his appearance Nov. 12 before a Senate committee to explain recently instituted pension-plan reforms in Israel.
Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), who is on the Finance Committee's health care and Social Security subcommittees, was impressed with the pension reforms when he met with Netanyahu in June, according to Netanyahu spokesman Uri Ginossar.
The move could help dis-tract attention from the severe budget cuts Netan-yahu has introduced back home.
Netanyahu also was to present to the senators his proposal for a rail link between the Red Sea and the Medi-terranean Sea - the kind of grand economic vision Netanyahu has used effectively in his political career.
Currently, however, Israel lacks a rail link between its capital, Jerusalem, and any-where else.
Netanyahu also has been discussing investments in Israel with major U.S. Jewish contributors, another im-portant constituency for those seeking the top office.
It is Mofaz, however, who is in the most sensitive position. The defense minister has been associated with Sharon government policies that have irked the Americans, including a proposal to build a security barrier that ventures inside the West Bank and to dis-mantle illegal settlement outposts.
One strategy for Mofaz has been to emphasize what Israel and the United States have in common.
In his meeting with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Nov. 10, Mofaz raised Iran's nuclear ambitions - a conversation fortuitously timed for the day a U.N. agency criticized Iran for hiding evidence of uranium and plutonium enrichment.
That kind of validation of Israel's decades-long sus-picions about the Iranian regime reinforces the Bush administration's post-Sept. 11 appreciation for Israeli prescience.
Mofaz and Rumsfeld also discussed Syria, another area where Israel and the United States agree more than ever, Alpher said.
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