Is Israel finally waking up?

Mar 23, 4:05 AM (ET)

By MATTI FRIEDMAN

JERUSALEM (AP) - If elections were held today the hardline Likud party would be the overwhelming victor, a new poll showed Friday, a sign of Israelis' deep dissatisfaction with their leaders.

The poll in the Maariv newspaper showed the Likud winning 35 seats in Israel's 120-seat parliament, easily defeating Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's ruling Kadima party.

The centrist Kadima would see its power drop more than 50 percent to a meager 13 seats in the theoretical election, and the dovish Labor Party would also get 13 seats, the poll showed. The next national elections are slated to be held only in 2010.

The survey was carried out by the TNS Teleseker polling company. Pollsters surveyed 460 people, and the margin of error was 4.5 percentage points.


Kadima and Labor, led by Defense Minister Amir Peretz, currently rule together in a coalition government. Olmert and Peretz have been dismally unpopular since Israel's war in Lebanon last summer, which they are widely perceived to have mishandled.

The opposition Likud, led by former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was not tarnished by the war.

Olmert's popularity has been further undermined by a series of corruption scandals involving him and members of his government. In the most recent case, police are looking into charges that one of Olmert's political allies, Finance Minister Avraham Hirchson, embezzled money from a nonprofit organization he ran.

The poll indicated that the Likud owed its success less to a rise in hardline sentiment than to the personal unpopularity of Olmert and Peretz.

The poll showed that if Kadima and Labor changed their leaders, their fortunes would change as well. If Kadima replaced Olmert with the popular foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, Kadima would beat the Likud and win the election, though just barely, the poll indicated.

If Labor replaced Peretz with either Ami Ayalon, a former Shin Bet chief, or former prime minister Ehud Barak, it would win several more seats than the 19 it has today, the poll showed. Barak and Ayalon are the two favorites to oust Peretz and take control of the party in a May primary.