Likud Decides on March Primary in Tactical Gain for Netanyahu

In a tactical victory for Benjamin Netanyahu, the Likud Central Committee has decided to hold a primary election for party leader next March.

A decisive 74 percent of the 3,000-member Central Committee voted Monday night to back Netanyahu’s proposal that the winner of the primary automatically become the Likud candidate for prime minister in 1996.

While that has been the norm until now, 1996 will be different, because Israel will be directly electing its prime minister for the first time. Under the current system, the prime minister is usually the head of the party that wins the most votes in the elections for Knesset.

Ze’ev “Benny” Begin, son of the late Likud prime minister, had argued that the March primary choose only a party leader to succeed the retiring Yitzhak Shamir. He proposed that the party’s candidate for prime minister be chosen at a later date, approximately a year before national elections.

But the vast majority of Central Committee members apparently agreed with Netanyahu that “primaries after primaries” were “not the way to rebuild the movement” after its defeat at the hands of Labor in the elections last June.

Another contender for the top post, former Foreign Minister David Levy, said the outcome of the vote was a victory for him as well, since his proposal was similar to that advanced by Netanyahu.

It differed only in allowing the Central Committee, on the request of half its members, to hold a second primary a year before the national elections if it was felt the chairman stood no chance of leading Likud to victory.

Even Begin tried to put a positive spin on his setback, saying he felt he had a good chance of winning the March primary.

But it was not clear from Ariel Sharon’s statements after the Central Committee vote whether he would run in the primary. His own proposal, which garnered only 15 percent of the vote, called for election now of a secretary-general to rebuild the party, postponing a decision on party leader.

Prior to the vote, Sharon had indicated he would not run in a primary. But that was before the Central Committee decided against his proposal in favor of that put forward by Netanyahu.

The two other contenders in the Likud stakes, Knesset members Moshe Katsav and Meir Sheetrit, did not take clearcut positions on the issue.

Netanyahu, a former ambassador to the United Nations who has been actively campaigning for the top party post for some time, scored another important victory at the Monday night session.

The Central Committee, by a large majority, approved his proposal for a 40 percent minimum in the primary. This means the winner need not secure an overall majority; a 40 percent-plus plurality will suffice.

Netanyahu said this would eliminate “deals” in the party. Outside observers said it meant he himself increased his chances of winning the leadership on the first ballot.

Levy had complained in a radio interview earlier that Netanyahu himself took part in an internal party deal designed to push Levy’s supporters out of realistic spots in the Likud Knesset list last spring.

Netanyahu half denied the charge, but added that such tactics were “not illegal, they are simply wrong, and I want `open politics’ and an end of deals.”

Analysts, meanwhile, pointed out that the five months until the primary is a long time — long enough for Netanyahu’s campaign to run out of steam and for another candidate to take the lead.

Levy predicted Monday that “as of tomorrow, my campaign will make itself felt throughout the country, more and more strongly, from day to day.”