Likud’s Central Committee on Thursday picked the top 50 candidates on its Knesset slate for the June 23 elections.
But the order in which they were selected is not expected to bear much relationship to the final list that will be presented to the voters.
The preliminary slate is topped by the popular transportation minister, Moshe Katsav, followed by Benjamin Netanyahu, a deputy minister, and Binyamin Begin, son of former Prime Minister Menachem Begin.
The two “Benjamins” represent a rapidly rising younger generation of Likud politicians.
A week ago, the 3,500-member Central Committee re-elected Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir party leader by a plurality of 46 percent. His only challengers, Foreign Minister David Levy and Housing Minister Ariel Sharon, got 31 and 22 percent respectively.
On Thursday, Sharon, the most hawkish of the Likud Cabinet ministers, made fourth place, while Levy came in 18th. Sharon promptly announced that his position in the Likud leadership was proven.
Levy attributed his poor showing to an alleged conspiracy between rival camps to deprive him of the No. 2 spot he holds in the outgoing government.
THREE VYING FOR SECOND SPOT
But the foreign minister insists he is not concerned, because the hierarchical order will change drastically before the Likud election list is final.
The Central Committee will meet again early next week to divide the 50 candidates into groups of seven.
The groups themselves will be arranged in descending order, and the position of individual candidates in each group will be determined by old-fashioned politicking.
Under Israel’s system of proportional representation, the higher the slot, the greater the chance of being elected.
Levy, Sharon and Defense Minister Moshe Arens have each announced they will run for first place in the first group of seven, which would place the winner directly beneath Shamir.
Arens, who is said to covet Levy’s job, took seventh place Thursday.
He came in behind Police Minister Ronni Milo, who was fifth, and Limor Livnat, a new name in the Likud lineup, who was sixth.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
