Likud woes: Can't get enough support

[Wordie]

Likud woes: Can't get enough support

By JOSHUA BRILLIANT
UPI Israel Correspondent

TEL AVIV, Israel, Feb. 22 (UPI) -- ...A little over a month before the Knesset elections, the Likud's campaign seems stuck. Poll after poll show that if elections were held now it would win some 15 mandates, the latest poll published Wednesday in the Haaretz newspaper's website talked of 14, in the 120-member Knesset. It might end up the third biggest party, way behind Kadima that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon formed last November when he quit the Likud. In the outgoing Knesset, before the split, the Likud had 40 seats.

Now nothing the Likud does seems to make a difference. "In any other country the fundamental events that happened in the past month would have resulted in changes," former minister Uzi Landau told United Press International.

...In previous election campaigns the specter of a dangerous enemy, especially terrorist attacks, helped galvanize Likud campaigns. Hamas' ascendancy seemed just the thing that Netanyahu needed.

...Kadima ***is down to 39 mandates but the Likud did not gain. The more extreme right wing National Union-National Religious Party benefited and would have won 11 mandates - just three less than the Likud- if elections were held now, the Haaretz poll showed.

http://www.upi.com/InternationalIntelligence/view.php?StoryID=20060222-025239-1836r