TEL AVIV, 12 January 2006 — Israeli politics resumed in earnest yesterday with four Likud ministers to submit letters of resignation as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon remained “serious but stable” after a massive stroke. Doctors have expressed amazement at the 77-year-old leader’s powers of recovery and a series of upbeat medical reports from the hospital where he is in intensive care have sunk a truce in electioneering for a March poll.
The leader of Sharon’s old right-wing party, Benjamin Netanyahu, was quick to launch a vitriolic attack on the caretaker government, pushing the four remaining Cabinet ministers from Likud into agreeing to resign.
Three of them have submitted letters of resignation to Netanyahu following his request that they step down yesterday so as not to implement the policies of Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, public and army radio reported.
Agriculture Minister Israel Katz and Health Minister Danny Naveh told the radio stations that Netanyahu was to submit their letters to the government secretariat later yesterday.
Education Minister Limor Livnat had also handed in a letter with Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom expected to do so later in the day, the radios reported. The party, which has been in crisis since Sharon jumped ship to create his new centrist movement Kadima six weeks before his stroke, is at loggerheads with Olmert, who was one of the first from Likud to defect to Kadima.
US President George W. Bush yesterday held his first phone conversation with Olmert since he assumed the reins of power, the prime minister’s office said.
Netanyahu is reluctant to see his ministers involved in government plans to allow Palestinian living in east Jerusalem to vote in their own parliamentary election on Jan. 25.
In a vote likely to see hard-liners seal their grip on Likud, the party was voting yesterday for its candidates for the March 28 general election. Candidates stood next to ballot boxes, kissing and embracing voters, before Likud’s party headquarters erupted into applause and shouts of “Bibi king of Israel” when Netanyahu turned up. The centrist Shinui, and ultraright-wing National Religious Party and National Union were also electing their candidates.
It remains unclear, however, when Kadima will draw up its own list of candidates with its leader still lying flat out in intensive care. Party officials had seized on a series of hopeful comments from doctors to suggest that Sharon, a towering figure and war hero in Israel whose fate is deemed crucial, might yet be able to head their candidate list.
More than a week after the massive brain hemorrhage that plunged him into a coma, he remained “serious but stable” with a “normal” heartbeat, the Hadassah Hospital announced yesterday. Politicians from both Likud and Labor have accused Kadima of abusing the prime minister’s name, acutely sensitive that Sharon’s plight has maximized public support for his fledgling centrist movement.
“In another two months, all this empathy for Sharon will be over,” former Likud cabinet minister Uzi Landau told AFP. “In another two months, the people will forget what happened a week ago. Today the Likud is a cleaner party,” added Landau, who is likely to be third on the Likud list behind Netanyahu and Shalom.
Kadima has lashed out at Netanyahu for allegedly presenting himself as Sharon’s natural successor. Jumping on the bandwagon of one of the most sacred tenets in Israel, of Jerusalem as its undivided capital, Netanyahu accused the interim government of making concessions that undermined the longstanding policy. His offensive came over government plans to allow residents of annexed Arab East Jerusalem to vote in this month’s Palestinian election.
The decision, which had already been announced in principle by Kadima member Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, is due to be sealed at Sunday’s Cabinet meeting.
