THEY are faint, but they are there: the first real signs of Likud disquiet. As next Wednesday's election day draws closer, and their candidate for prime minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu fails to make headway in the polls, nerves are definitely fraying at Likud campaign headquarters.
Six opinion polls released in the past two days all show Labour's Prime Minister, Mr Shimon Peres, either maintaining his longstanding 4-6 per cent lead or, in some cases, even expanding it. The impression is that the Labour leader is being boosted by support from traditional Likud voters who say that, while they plan to stick with the Likud when voting for the Knesset party of their choice, they will vote for Mr Peres in the separate, crucial ballot for the prime ministership.
In an effort to reverse that trend, one of the most widely respected faces of the Likud, the former justice minister, Mr Dan Meridor, was called in for the latest party campaign advertisements, to plead with Likud voters to support Mr Netanyahu. But Mr Meridor has his work cut out. Labour, in its campaign commercials, has done a pretty effective job of portraying Mr Netanyahu as an empty vessel competent to offer short sound bites, but possessed of no deep political wisdom or burning ideology.
Mr Netanyahu has hardly helped his own credibility. When reports surfaced several weeks ago that he formally Americanised his surname, to the more easily pronounced Nitay, when a student in the US in the 1970s, he vehemently denied the claim. Yesterday, a Hebrew newspaper published the official Commonwealth of Massachusetts forms showing the formal request and approval for the change.
A recent profile in the magazine Vanity Fair, widely reported here, did him more damage, stressing his emphasis on image over substance, and describing him at one point as "a human jukebox, emitting a wide range of canned sounds depending on which button is pushed".
True to his American education, Mr Netanyahu has relied on an American campaign director, Mr Arthur Finkelstein, to hammer home his electoral themes. Mr Finkelstein, something of a guru back in the US, has opted for the unsubtle repetition of a few short blunt phrases in commercial after commercial: "Peres will divide Jerusalem"; "There's no peace, no security, no reason to vote for Peres"; "Netanyahu - making a secure peace".
If Mr Netanyahu fails next Wednesday, this approach will doubtless be blamed; Mr Finkelstein will be charged with underestimating the intellect of the Israeli electorate.
But while the Likud may be increasingly worried, there are two points worth re emphasising in Mr Netanyahu's favour: first, May 29th is still five days away, and it would only take a single Hamas suicide bombing to send the Israeli floating voters swimming into the arms of the hardline candidate.
Second, Israeli opinion polls have consistently overestimated Labour's support, most memorably when Mr Peres was actually declared the winner of the 1981 elections on the basis of a television exit poll. It was Menachem Begin of the Likud who eventually formed that government.