Israel's moderate opposition leader Mr Ehud Barak is holding onto a substantial lead over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with polling just nine days away.
Surveys in both Israel's main newspapers yesterday put Mr Barak, who has pledged to rebuild fractured relations with the Palestinians and to revive efforts toward a peace treaty with Syria, well ahead of the hard-line incumbent, whose three years in office have seen moderate Arab states freeze their relations with Israel. Yediot Ahronot, which polled 900 people, put Mr Barak eight per cent ahead of Mr Netanyahu; Ma'ariv, which polled 1,000 Israelis, gave Mr Barak an unprecedented 12 per cent lead. There are three other candidates bidding for the prime minister-ship, but all are now under pressure to pull out before election day, May 17, obviating the need for a second-round "run-off" between Mr Barak and Mr Netanyahu two weeks later.
The polls must come as a crushing disappointment for Mr Netanyahu.
At the root of his troubles is a collapse of support among Russian immigrant voters - two-thirds of whom backed him last time. Now, they are shifting to Mr Barak, angered by Mr Netanyahu's alliance with the Shas ultra-Orthodox party.
Shas, which controls the Interior Ministry in the outgoing coalition, claims that 40 per cent of the immigrants are not Jewish; Interior Minister Mr Eli Suissa remarked earlier this week that many of them were "counterfeiters, crooks and prostitutes." On Thursday, Mr Netanyahu brokered a brief "reconciliation" meeting between a professedly apologetic Mr Suissa and immigrant leader Mr Natan Sharansky.
The Prime Minister has this week also attempted to demonise Mr Barak - by claiming, on the strength of an inaccurate Russian translation of a recent biography - that the Labour leader is ready to grant the Palestinians sovereignty in East Jerusalem (something Mr Barak denies). He has attempted to portray Labour and its moderate allies as a group of patronising elitists who loathe working-class and Orthodox Israelis. And he has attempted to prove his own tough credentials by ordering the closure of the main Palestinian political headquarters in East Jerusalem, the Orient House, in defiance of warnings that this may trigger an outbreak of Palestinian violence. These efforts smack increasingly of desperation.