Netanyahu wins Likud leadership

Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won a primary to head the Likud Party in a March election against the leader who abandoned the party, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, just hours before Sharon was to be released from a Jerusalem hospital after treatment for a mild stroke.

Netanyahu, who quit Sharon’s cabinet in protest just before Israel’s summer pullout from Gaza and part of the West Bank, addressed happy backers early today and pledged to bring his party back to power.

Though Likud dominated Israeli politics for nearly three decades, Sharon’s exit has decimated its power base, with polls predicting a loss of two thirds of Likud’s seats in March 28 parliamentary elections, while Sharon’s new centrist party, Kadima, enjoys a wide lead.

Sharon took a dozen Likud members of parliament with him to his new party and added some prominent members of the left-of-centre Labour Party, including elder statesman Shimon Peres.

Addressing happy backers in a crowded, steaming room at party headquarters, Netanyahu turned first to Sharon.

“First of all, I want to sent best wishes for a full recovery to the prime minister, and I’m sure I speak for all of you,” he said.

Doctors said Sharon would be released today from Jerusalem’s Hadassah University Hospital, where he was taken on Sunday evening. The doctors said he suffered a mild stroke, but it would leave no permanent damage. Aides said Sharon, 77, would be back at work soon.

Sharon aide Raanan Gissin said it would take some time for him to resume his full schedule.

“Everyone who undergoes this kind of event, it does something to him in terms of perceptions, in terms of the need to hold back and take it easy for a while,” Gissin said.

Doctors and aides insisted that besides the stroke and obesity, Sharon has no serious health issues, but his sudden hospitalisation was likely to bring a new issue into the three-month election campaign, whether Sharon is physically fit to continue.

Netanyahu, 56, a forceful public speaker who served as prime minister from 1996 to 1999, could be a formidable candidate, leading an attack on Sharon from the hawkish side, while the dovish Labour Party worries the other flank.

Polls taken before the Likud primary showed the party taking a severe beating in the March 28 election.

Netanyahu told his backers his victory was the beginning of “returning the Likud to power”. He said: “First of all, we must bring the Likud back to itself and then to the leadership of the country. It begins now, up, up and up.”

Exit polls from all three Israeli TV stations showed Netanyahu receiving 47% of the vote, while Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom got 32%, right-wing extremist Moshe Feiglin 15% and Agriculture Minister Yisrael Katz 6%.