JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon took to the airwaves Thursday night in an angry performance aimed at saving his struggling re-election campaign by characterizing bribery allegations against him and his hawkish Likud Party as “despicable libel.”
It took Israel’s election commissioner just 13 minutes to order local television and radio to stop broadcasting the news conference, calling it election propaganda that violated broadcasting laws.
The truncated speech highlighted Sharon’s fading hopes of a strong Likud election finish Jan. 28, which would allow him to be in firm control of the government in coalition with much smaller conservative parties. Instead, analysts say, a severely weakened Likud probably will have to reach out to form a coalition with the dovish Labor Party.
The result could be that Sharon is forced into a much softer stance toward dealing with Palestinians than had been expected just a few days ago.
A new Likud-Labor partnership was unthinkable even a month ago. Sharon’s “national unity” government collapsed at the end of October when Labor ministers withdrew from his Cabinet to protest budget measures supporting Jewish settlers in the predominantly Palestinian West Bank. The collapse strengthened Sharon’s and Likud’s popularity.
Now Likud is fighting to stay in power amid the bribery scandal, in which some party members have been accused of buying votes in the primaries. The number and intensity of the allegations are unprecedented in Israel’s 55-year-old history, said Ephraim Ya’ar, a Tel Aviv university sociology professor who specializes in Israeli political trends.
“It’s an embarrassment for Israel,” Shinui Party Knesset member Avraham Poraz, the deputy leader of his party, declared in an interview with Knight Ridder.
The biggest blow came this week, when Sharon also became embroiled in a bribery scandal. On Tuesday, the liberal English-language daily newspaper Ha’aretz reported that the prime minister received a $1.5 million loan from a South African businessman to use as collateral for another loan that covered the return of illegal campaign funds from 1999.