ARGUABLY the most important election campaign in the 48 year history of the state of Israel officially began last night, when the Prime Minister, Mr Shimon Peres, confirmed he will be going to the polls in late spring.
Mr Peres's governing Labour Party will today table a proposal for the dissolution of the Knesset, and consultations with other political parties are expected to produce an agreed election date in late May or early June, with May 28th and June 4th the most probable.
Mr Peres (72) inherited the posit ion of Prime Minister last November, following the assassination of Mr Yitzhak Rabin by a religious Israeli student opposed to the government's land for peace deal with the Palestinians in the West Bank.
Announcing last night that he would now be going to the polls, "as soon as possible", Mr Peres recalled that some of his advisers had urged him to call a snap election after the assassination - when the sympathy vote in favour of the peace process would have been at its highest.
"I rejected that idea out of hand," said Mr Peres, explaining he had felt his duty at the time was to stabilise the country and to try to heal the terrible domestic rifts exposed by the killing.
For the first time, last night Mr Peres revealed he had himself heard the shots that killed Mr Rabin, as he was driving away from a Tel Aviv peace rally a few seconds ahead of the prime minister. "My heart refused to believe that something had happened to Yitzhak," he said.
Now Israel had found its feet again, said Mr Peres, and Israelis were recognising the fruits of peace: the army had pulled smoothly out of Palestinian cities in the West Bank; the Palestinian elections had been a success terrorism had declined; peace with Jordan had proved strong and with talks continuing on an accord with Syria, Mr Peres said he anticipated "an end to war in the entire region" by the end of the century.
Acknowledging that he was bound to be attacked by his main rival for the premiership, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu of Likud, for purportedly capitalising on Mr Rabin's death by bringing polling day forward from October, Mr Peres said he felt it was now time to renew his own and the government's mandate.
He added that he had only decided to advance the elections once he had been assured by US peace mediators that the campaign would not force a suspension of peace talks with Syria.
These elections are effectively a head to head battle between Mr Peres and Mr Netanyahu, with a third candidate, the former Likud foreign minister, Mr David Levy, unlikely to pose a threat.
Mr Netanyahu said last night that, if elected, he would maintain Israeli sovereignty through out Jerusalem and on the Golan Heights, limit Palestinian self rule, and hold on to Jewish West Bank settlements - none of which, he claimed, Mr Peres would do.
More than 20 years younger than Mr Peres, Mr Netanyahu is trailing him by about 20 per cent in latest opinion polls, and he also faces disunity within the Likud over how to proceed with the peace process.
If elections were held tomorrow, Mr Peres would certainly win. But a surge of attacks on Israeli targets by Islamic radicals, for example, could make a mockery of the opinion polls.