JERUSALEM, 16 December 2005 — Magistrates yesterday rejected an appeal by the son of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for his sentencing over a campaign finance scandal to be postponed until after the March general election.
Lawyers for Omri Sharon, who pleaded guilty to charges of providing false testimony and falsifying documents last month, had argued for a delay on the grounds that opponents of his father would seek to politicize the hearing and damage the premier’s reputation.
However the district tribunal in Tel Aviv said that the sentencing hearing should go ahead as scheduled on Jan. 23, some 10 weeks before the country goes to the polls.
The court case follows a police investigation into allegations of illegal financing of Ariel Sharon’s successful 1999 campaign for the leadership of the right-wing Likud party.
Ariel Sharon last month quit Likud to form a new party called Kadima.
Omri, who is a Likud MP, has been a key backroom ally of his father but has kept a low profile since his guilty plea and is set to stand down from parliament regardless of the eventual sentence which could land him in prison.
Meanwhile, support for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s new centrist party has taken a dip for the first time, though he remains the clear frontrunner for a March general election, a poll showed yesterday.
A survey in the Haaretz newspaper gave Sharon’s Kadima party 35 seats in the 120-member parliament, after previous polls showed a steady climb to about 40 a week ago.
The poll showed the center-left Labor party in second place but closing the gap and picking up at least two of Sharon’s lost seats, with 24 seats, up from 22 in a previous survey.
Some Israelis may have drifted back from Sharon’s party to Labor after two leading hawks, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and Tzahi Hanegbi, a former police minister, joined ranks with Sharon in the past week, the newspaper said.
The Likud came in third in the poll with 12 seats. But political commentators have said the party could get a boost after Monday’s leadership primary.
A new survey showed Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister who had been favored to win the Likud race, was now neck-and-neck with Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, contradicting other polls that had given Netanyahu a big lead.
The poll published by Israel Radio and the Ynetnews Web site said 40 percent of Likud members supported Netanyahu, while 39 percent backed Shalom. Another poll published yesterday gave Netanyahu 40 percent to 23 percent for Shalom.
Netanyahu quit as finance minister from Sharon’s cabinet in August in protest against Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip completed in September, championing Israeli rightists who condemned the pullout as a surrender to Palestinian violence.
The Tunisian-born Shalom, who supported the withdrawal, largely draws his popularity from Likud’s considerable constituency of Jewish immigrants from Arab countries.
