OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 2 January 2003 — Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s firing of a deputy cabinet minister failed yesterday to douse the flames of a vote-buying scandal that has cut into support for his Likud party just weeks before Israel’s general election.
Analysts warned his party may also suffer from rulings against Arab candidates by an election committee dominated by right wingers aligned with Sharon, whose son Omri has been a target of media coverage of the graft scandal.
"Sharon’s aim is to stop the intifada against him and against his son," political analyst Hanan Crystal told Reuters, using the Palestinians’ word for their two-year-old uprising against Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
"We don’t know yet if he succeeded or not. This is like Watergate and it can ultimately reach the top," he said.
Sharon sacked Deputy Cabinet Minister Naomi Blumenthal on Tuesday for refusing to answer police questions over charges she gave bribes to Likud party activists in return for votes in a party ballot last month to pick Likud candidates for election.
"Your refusal to do so stains a large movement which runs and will continue to run the affairs of the State of Israel," Sharon told Blumenthal in a letter that was leaked to the media.
The move was seen as a bid to stem a tide of voters reconsidering their support of Likud in the January 28 election because of suspicions of widespread corruption in the party.
Polls show the right-wing Likud heavily favored to win the poll, giving Sharon a second term as prime minister. But the scandal has reduced the party’s lead, possibly hampering Sharon’s chances of forming a stable coalition government.
Likud has benefited from Sharon’s tough handling of Palestinian violence amid the deadliest suicide bombing campaign against Israel in the two years since a Palestinian uprising for a state began after peace talks froze.
An aide to Blumenthal threatened to turn the tables on Sharon by saying he would file a complaint with police against Omri Sharon, whom he accused of behaving improperly in the vote for Likud candidates.
Israeli media allege that Omri Sharon, a political adviser to his father, has contacts with "criminal elements" elected to Likud party bodies and that he helped a former convict friend obtain a government contract.
Newspaper commentators have accused Sharon of singling out Blumenthal to steer attention away from his son.
Sharon had vowed to expel any party members tainted by the scandal, in which activists in the Likud’s 2,940-strong Central Committee allegedly accepted cash and favors in return for their votes to select the party’s list of election candidates. Several activists, including Blumenthal’s chauffeur, have been arrested.
Israel’s Supreme Court will hear petitions on Tuesday asking it to overrule election committee decisions to ban lawmaker Azmi Bishara and his Arab-Israeli party Balad and Arab-Israeli parliamentarian Ahmed Tibi from the election.
If they stand, the rulings could deepen resentment among Israel’s minority Arabs who complain of discrimination.
The court will also deal with petitions to disqualify Jewish ultra-nationalist Baruch Marzel, whose candidacy was approved by the committee despite his involvement in a banned group that says Arabs should be expelled from Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.
The committee’s rulings have been lambasted by judicial officials including retired Supreme Court justice Professor Yitzhak Zamir. (R)
