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January 29, 1999/12 Shevat 5759, Vol. 51, No. 18
Mordechai poses new challenge to Netanyahu
DAVID LANDAU
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
JERUSALEM - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has come out swinging against his former defense minister, but behind the premier's confident veneer lurks a fear that Yitzhak Mordechai will be a formidable opponent in the race for prime minister.
Netanyahu knows there were two voting blocs that led to his victory in the 1996 elections over former Prime Minister Shimon Peres: the Sephardic and Orthodox communities. Netanyahu also knows that he needs these voters if he hopes to win the May vote.
Enter Mordechai, who is heading a newly formed centrist party after he was fired by Netanyahu over the past weekend. Born in Kurdistan, the religiously traditional Mordechai is the first candidate for prime minister in this year's crowded election field who seriously threatens to win over these twin sources of Netanyahu support. The threat is more likely, as centrist officials have suggested, because disenchanted Likud voters can more easily switch their allegiance to a centrist than to a Labor Party candidate - particularly given the long history of antipathy for Labor among the large Moroccan community and other traditionally pro-Likud sectors in Israeli society.
When it came to describing Mordechai and the other centrist party leaders, Netanyahu did not spare the vitriol this week, calling them a "bunch of losers motivated by nothing but personal ambition." The description, part of a bare-knuckled exchange of insults between Netanyahu and Mordechai in the wake of the firing, is important because it exposes two problems confronting Netanyahu:
. He called them losers, but opinion polls show he would lose to their candidate should a runoff vote be necessary.
. He called them ambitious, but events proved otherwise this week, when the leaders of the centrist group - Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, former army chief of staff; Dan Meridor, former Likud finance minister; and Roni Milo, former mayor of Tel Aviv - set aside their individual prime ministerial ambitions to let Mordechai lead their quest to bring Netanyahu down.
Netanyahu, who was re-elected leader of his party this week in a nationwide Likud primary against challenger Moshe Arens, insists that he will win despite the setbacks and defections dogging his campaign.
"The people are with us, regardless of the media," the premier said on Jan. 25. "The people want a strong leader, a leader who decides - and acts."
Despite his assured stance, Netanyahu can hardly brush off the vow Mordechai made this week: "I will do anything and everything I can to bring Netanyahu down." This vow, in fact, is what unites all the top officials in the still-unnamed centrist party. Three of the centrists - Mordechai, Meridor and Milo - are prominent former Likud figures who know Netanyahu intimately and served under his leadership before bolting the party. The fourth, Shahak, was chief of staff for much of Netanyahu's two-and-a-half years in office.
The centrists now need to hammer out a credible platform that will be more than a set of platitudes midway between the positions of Labor and Likud.
But beyond the polished phrases that they and their professional advisers are certain to come up with, one message will prevail: Netanyahu is not fit to be prime minister. This was Mordechai's refrain during the past week.
For his part, Shahak, when he recently announced his entry into politics, had a slightly different version, calling Netanyahu a "danger to the nation."
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