A split in Israel's ruling party loomed as a result of its pullout from the Gaza Strip and part of the West Bank, with Benjamin Netanyahu, a contentious ex-premier, challenging Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for his job and putting Mideast peace efforts on indefinite hold.
Netanyahu made it official on Tuesday -- he will run against Sharon in Likud Party primaries, hoping to cash in on stiff opposition among registered Likud voters to the pullout. Polls show Netanyahu far ahead of Sharon among those voters, the ones who choose the party leader.
The Sharon-Netanyahu split, already punctuated by bitter personal invective on both sides, plunges Israel into an extended election process. General elections are set for November next year but could be brought forward as the political pot reaches its boiling point.
Since Palestinians are also facing parliamentary elections in January, resumption of Mideast peace talks appears unlikely before the voters have their say.
Appealing to his hawkish supporters, Netanyahu lashed out at Sharon for his unilateral pullout from Gaza, accusing him of creating a de facto Palestinian state -- and said he would take a far tougher stance toward the Palestinians.
"Sharon gave and gave and gave, the Palestinians got and got and got, and my question is what did we get? Nothing, and nothing and nothing," Netanyahu said.
The Sharon-Netanyahu battle burst into the open after a party tribunal ruled Monday that the 3,000-member Likud Central Committee, stacked with Netanyahu supporters, could set a primary date in a Sept. 25 vote.
Netanyahu would benefit from a quick leadership contest. Sharon, whose standing in the hardline party plunged because of his Gaza pullout, needs more time to reposition himself and stage a comeback.
Some Sharon confidantes have advised the prime minister to leave the party he helped found three decades ago and create a new centrist party with Likud moderates, capitalizing on the broad popularity Sharon enjoys among the general public.
A Netanyahu-led Likud is expected to win far fewer than the 40 seats that Likud, the largest party, currently holds in the 120-member parliament.
Senior Likud officials warned that party infighting could leave it badly weakened and out of power.
"It's certainly true that when the Labor Party does its election campaign spots, it won't have much work to do," Gideon Saar, Likud's parliamentary chief, told Israel's Channel 2 TV.
Former premier Ehud Barak of Labor responded to the Likud turmoil by calling on all candidates for Labor leader to unite behind elder statesman Shimon Peres, currently the vice premier.
"Shimon Peres is far preferable to Sharon and Netanyahu," he told Channel 10 TV.
Vice Premier Ehud Olmert, a strong Sharon ally, said Netanyahu planned to steer Likud, and the country, into the hands of the hardline extremists.
"What he wants to do is take the state of Israel back into diplomatic isolation, economic boycott, internal disputes, into disagreement with the United States -- our greatest friend -- Europe and the rest of the world," he told Israel TV.
The broadsides began even before Netanyahu's announcement.
On Monday, Sharon attacked his rival, who earned a reputation for political recklessness as prime minister from 1996 to 1999, as prone to panic and unfit to lead.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
RSS