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Israeli Vice Premier Shimon Peres speaks during a meeting with members of the World Jewish Congress in Jerusalem Sunday Nov 27, 2005. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is trying to win over Shimon Peres as a member for his new political party, "Kadima," the Maariv newspaper reported Sunday. (AP)
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| By Associated Press November 29, 2005 |
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Elder statesman Shimon Peres hinted he'll leave the Labor Party, his political home of 60 years, to join forces with Ariel Sharon. A prominent TV journalist quit her job to hook up with Labor. A respected professor announced he's switching parties.
In a small country like Israel, where everyone knows everyone, new political camps were engaged in a fierce tug of war to haul in celebrities ahead of elections.
Peres would be the big catch, in terms of both domestic and international cachet. The 82-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner recently lost control of Labor to union firebrand Amir Peretz, and speculation has been rife that he'd bolt the party that rebuffed him to ally with Prime Minister Sharon - the only other leading member of Israel's old guard still in politics.
In Barcelona on Tuesday, Peres refused to be drawn out. "I shall decide tomorrow night," he said.
But he had warm words for Sharon - and none for Labor.
"The real change is not in the Labor Party. The real change is in the Likud Party," he added. "Mr Sharon took a different direction for a Palestinian state. He wants to continue the peace process."
Sharon's Kadima Party had two confirmed catches Tuesday - compared to one for Amir Peretz's Labor Party.
Joining Labor was Shelly Yachimovitch, who has long identified with union boss Peretz's battle against government policies that he says benefit the rich while hurting the poor.
"For the first time, after so many years in which the economic right has been going wild .... Labor is offering a social-democratic alternative to this economic right, which has caused such grave damage," Yachimovitch told Israel Radio. "I had an intense desire to be a part of it."
Peretz welcomed Yachimovitch's career change as a "breath of fresh air for politics."
"Shelly's entry (into politics) is not only natural, but practically spells something new for Israeli politics," he said.
Sharon's new party, Kadima, added to its roster academic heavyweight Uriel Reichman, a founder and chairman of the secular, middle class Shinui party, who has had tense relations with party chief Yosef Lapid.
Reichman, president of the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, a private think tank and university, said in a release that he would be minister of education if Sharon were to be re-elected. "I am leaving the Inter-Disciplinary Center to perform national service and advance the education system."
Reichman was the academic counterweight to Ben Gurion University and former World Bank economist President Avishay Braverman, whom Sharon had courted but lost to Peretz. Peretz is trying to soften his image of radical socialist throwback by bringing people with economic stature into his camp.
Another party-jumper was lawmaker Dalia Itzik, who bolted Labor to join Sharon, intensifying speculation that her mentor, Peres, would be next.
Although Itzik denied that her defection to Kadima was part of a package deal, Labor secretary-general Eitan Cabel was skeptical.
"It looks like a package deal," Cabel told Army Radio. "We spoke about their remaining (in Labor) and not defecting to another party, but apparently things were already sealed, and the talks with us were nothing but a smokescreen."
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