Netanyahu in strong position to challenge weak Barak

The former Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, has hardly been seen in public since his humiliating election defeat…

The former Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, has hardly been seen in public since his humiliating election defeat by Mr Ehud Barak in May last year. But on the handful of occasions when he has emerged, the former Likud leader has attracted movie-star attention. And now, regularly out-polling Mr Barak in the opinion surveys, Mr Netanyahu is stepping up preparations for his comeback.

A few weeks ago, when he drove out to the West Bank settlement of Ofrah, which was marking its 25th anniversary, he proved the evening's hottest draw, surrounded by swarms of admirers, seated in the front row, feted by all the speakers.

Likewise when he went walkabout through the towns and villages in northern Israel, close to the Lebanon border. And when, during last month's Camp David summit, he told the TV networks he had something he wanted to say, they gave him a live, primetime platform, in which he set out his concerns at the concessions Mr Barak was purportedly making. Remarkably, Mr Netanyahu was allowed to speak straight to camera, in a presidential-style address to the nation, rather than face the conventional interview format.

Having resigned the Likud leadership within minutes of the election defeat becoming clear, and having kept his appearances so rare since, Mr Netanyahu has managed to distance himself from the infighting that has beset the Likud in recent months, and seems so far along the path to political rehabilitation that opinion polls now consistently rate him more popular than Mr Barak, who beat him by a full 12 per cent in that general election only 15 months ago. The latest such survey of the nation's prime ministerial preferences, in yesterday's Ma'ariv daily, put him at 43 per cent, to 38 per cent for Mr Barak.

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Mr Barak yesterday met the visiting US peace envoy, Mr Dennis Ross, and it was announced that he will meet next month at the UN General Assembly with President Clinton. The Palestinian President, Mr Yasser Arafat, will also see Mr Clinton at the UN, but there are no plans yet for a three-way summit.

Mr Netanyahu, of course, has always doubted that Mr Arafat really wants full reconciliation with Israel, and his path back to power depends on the failure of the current peace efforts. It also depends on the Attorney-General deciding not to indict him on corruption charges: police have probed various allegations against Mr Netanyahu, including the claim that he sought to get the state to pay for tens of thousands of pounds worth of domestic and other work done privately for the Netanyahu household; a decision on whether to prosecute is expected shortly.

If there are no charges, a vindicated Mr Netanyahu will be superbly placed to challenge Mr Barak, who currently heads a minority coalition and is now attracting increasing bad press. A close aide resigned from his office this week, and gave an interview yesterday saying that the country was being run like "a banana republic" and that the Prime Minister's Office functioned less like the "elite commando unit" that Mr Barak had promised and more like something out of the "Afghan Liberation Army".