 |
 |
 |
|
|
Ariel Sharon (File Photo - AP)
|
|
|
|
|
|
| By Associated Press March 29, 2006 |
|
| |
The man who dominated Israel's elections on Tuesday was the one who didn't run: Ariel Sharon.
Israel's 78-year-old leader has lain comatose in a Jerusalem hospital since suffering a stroke Jan. 4.
But mammoth photos of a vigorous-looking Sharon look down on Israel from campaign billboards all over the country.
The Kadima Party he formed just four months ago to draw Israel's final borders adopted the slogan of "In Sharon's footsteps."
In his speech to party activists after the polls closed, Olmert sent his best wishes to Sharon, "the man who had to courage and stamina to change things, to suggest a new way, who founded Kadima. At the time he was close to achieving his aim, his body gave out."
Candidates - even his bitterest rivals - have invoked his name and image almost shamelessly.
"Looking back, it is possible to say that there has never been a leader, however great, including David Ben-Gurion or Menachem Begin, who continued after his retirement to influence his party the way Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is influencing the political system in the present capacity of absentee," commentator Yoel Marcus wrote Tuesday in the Haaretz daily.
With his unilateral pullout from the Gaza Strip, he took Israel's first, historic steps to set the country's borders. In doing so, Sharon fell in step with what a majority of the Israeli public has wanted for years _ a divorce from the Palestinians. His promise of more sweeping territorial pullbacks in the West Bank offered a tantalizing possibility of further defusing Israel's century-old conflict with the Palestinians.
Sharon formed Kadima in late November and quit the Likud Party he helped to form three decades ago because he knew he would spend precious time and energy battling Likud rebels who had unsuccessfully tried to block his Gaza pullout.
Overnight, Kadima became the dominant party on the country's political map, and the clear front-runner in the elections he immediately called. After his stroke, pundits predicted that the party, whose name means "Forward," would fall apart, coalescing as it had around Sharon's person.
But they were wrong.
Ehud Olmert, the Sharon confidant who stood in for the ailing leader as acting prime minister, turned the race into a plebiscite on Sharon's program of separating from the Palestinians.
Kadima campaign material played on Sharon's image, and party officials constantly drummed the message that they were continuing in Sharon's path.
Sharon gazed down from billboards, and his image and voice loomed large in televised campaign ads that showed pictures of him on his sheep ranch, and at prominent moments in his military and political careers.
"The fact that Sharon isn't here to see this day is killing me," said Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, a close confidante who followed Sharon into Kadima. "This man is here with us, but he is not in his rightful place."
Israeli commentator Emanuel Rosen, remarking hours before polls closed on low turnout and last-minute attempts by Kadima to bring people to the voting booths, observed: "Olmert is not Sharon, and therefore you see an attempt to remind the 70 percent who haven't voted yet that this party was started by Ariel Sharon."
At Kadima headquarters Tuesday night, 6 foot by 6 foot (2 meter by 2 meter) headshots of Sharon flanked either side of a screen bearing the slogan, "Israel continues going forward."
The screen featured video clips of Sharon speaking at the podium in the prime minister's office.
There wasn't a picture of Olmert in sight.
|
|
 
|
|
|
|
Click on the blue headline to read a Talkback comment and respond to it. Click on the  icon to send a private email to the talkback writer. The icon appears only if the writer has decided to be contacted. If no popup window appears, please make sure your popup blocker allows israelinsider.com.
|
|
| |
|
|
