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Israel Set to Sweep Sharon to Power After Months of Bloodletting
More than four million Israelis vote Tuesday in a pivotal election set to bring the hawkish Ariel Sharon to power, marking a sharp shift to the right after the worst Israeli-Palestinian violence in years.
The ballot is widely regarded as a referendum on Middle East peace, with both Sharon and embattled incumbent Ehud Barak pledging to try to forge an accord with the Palestinians, although their approaches are poles apart.
Polling stations open across the country at 7 am (0500 GMT) and most will remain open until 10 pm (2000 GMT), with initial projections from exit polls due soon after they close.
Israel has decided to seal off the Palestinian territories on election day -- a civic holiday -- amid warnings of possible anti-Israeli attacks by militant groups.
In a stunning comeback for a man written off over the Lebanon war 18 years ago, the 72-year-old Sharon, nicknamed the "Bulldozer," is tipped to steamroll into power with a crushing win over Barak.
Final opinion polls published in the Israeli press on the eve of the election showed the hardline former general Sharon maintaining his massive double-digit lead over the 58-year-old Barak, both military men turned politicians.
It is the third election in just five years for Israelis but the first time in the nation's history that they have gone to the polls to choose a prime minister without a parallel parliamentary election.
And some commentators have warned that political mayhem could ensue, triggering general elections ahead of their due date in May 2003.
The election is widely regarded as a protest vote against the Labour leader after the collapse of peace talks and the explosion of violence more than four months ago rather than a ringing endorsement of the rival Likud party chief.
Israel's community of immigrants from the former Soviet Union, who make up some 18 percent of the electorate, and its Arab citizens are expected to desert Barak after helping him to a landslide victory over then right-wing premier Benjamin Netanyahu in May 1999.
Arab Israelis, who represent about 13 percent of the electorate, have threatened to boycott the poll. They are furious with Barak over the killing of 13 members of their community in the early days of the intifada, but also despise Sharon, who is blamed for triggering the latest uprising with a controversial visit to the al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem, a site holy to both Jews and Muslims. Nearly 400 people have died in the violence.
If elected, Sharon has said he plans to form a national unity government rather than lead a fragile coalition with some 63 MPs in parliament, an unruly chamber of 120 MPs from around 19 different factions from right and left, religious and secular.
Barak, who has insisted he will remain at the head of the Labour party even if he loses Tuesday, has so far rejected joining a Sharon government.
Whoever wins has 45 days to form a government after the results are made public on February 14. With a Sharon victory all but in the bag, right-wing and religious parties are already jostling to try to secure themselves cabinet posts.
Barak, a single-minded former army chief of staff who is also the nation's most decorated soldier, forced the special election with his dramatic resignation in December to seek a renewed mandate for peace with the Palestinians.
Despite his euphoric election over right-wing darling Netanyahu in 1999, garnering 56 percent of the vote, he has since lurched from crisis to crisis on both the domestic and diplomatic fronts.
Throughout the unusually lacklustre campaign, Sharon has kept up a commanding lead of around 20 points against Barak.
The Labour prime minister has tried in vain to focus on his rival's bloodstained past, particularly the disastrous invasion of Lebanon in 1982, and insists he is the leader capable of bringing peace with the Palestinians.
Sharon has maintained a hard line towards the Palestinians, saying he wants peace only with security and refusing to see any division of Jerusalem and any further land transfers to Palestinians.
But what the polls have also shown is that Israelis would have preferred other candidates -- Netanyahu and the man he defeated in 1996, Shimon Peres.
Netanyahu, Sharon's predecessor at the head of the right-wing Likud party, threw in the towel after parliament refused to dissolve itself and hold legislative elections.
Peres, a Nobel Peace laureate whose career is nevertheless strewn with electoral defeats, failed to secure the required backing of 10 MPs for a run at the nation's top job.
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