MR BENJAMIN Netanyahu, the hardline Likud politician who is challenging for the Israeli premiership, comprehensively outperformed the incumbent, Mr Shimon Peres of Labour, in the sole television debate of the campaign, screened here last night.
With elections taking place on Wednesday, the half hour studio confrontation was Mr Netanyahu's last real chance to try to make up ground on Mr Peres, who has been consistently 5 per cent ahead in the polls. And he took full advantage.
Presentation and style count for everything in such encounters, content for little. And while many of Mr Netanyahu's comments amounted to mere reworkings of the tired central slogans of the Likud's entire election campaign, he came across as a man at ease in the studio, at ease with himself, confident and vigorous.
Mr Peres, 26 years older than his 46 year old challenger, seemed like a politician from another age, doing his best to remain statesmanlike and calm, but discernibly unhappy to be in the same room as his rival, and anxious for the ordeal to be over.
Mr Netanyahu, who devoted considerable time over the past few days to rehearsing his appearance, was clearly the better prepared. In the rigidly structured format he had constructed his answers to finish exactly as his allocated time ran out, whereas Mr Peres either overran or failed to use his full allotted period.
Only too aware that Mr Netanyahu is the most adept television performer in Israeli politics, Mr Peres sensibly compensated by highlighting his half a century of experience. When asked, for example, about his reported readiness to abandon Israel's nuclear capability in a future age of comprehensive peace, he scoffed: "I built the [Israel's] nuclear reactor.
He also did his best to expose what he charged was the hollowness behind Mr Netanyahu's polished rhetoric, beginning one answer witheringly with: "If we had to vote for a model and not a prime minister . . ."
But Mr Netanyahu's more incisive approach cut deeper. Five six, seven times he charged that the people of Israel were "living in fear" of further Islamic extremist suicide bombings, ridiculing Mr Peres's vision of a new Middle East peace in the context of such harsh realities.
Mr Peres offered nothing substantial by way of response, other than the hope that he was creating for a new generation of Israeli youth, and confidence that terrorism would ultimately be defeated.
The moderator, an accomplished journalist, Dan Margalit, asked well conceived questions, some of them pointed and personal about Mr Peres's advanced age, about Mr Netanyahu's impulsiveness and acknowledged adultery. But both men, taking advantage of a format that prevented Margalit from keeping them on track, frequently and brazenly ignored the queries and sallied forth instead on their own favourite issues.
As a finale, each candidate was permitted to ask the other a single. question. Mr Netanyahu, typically, returned to his most potent theme, the "deteriorating" security situation in Israel, to which Mr Peres retorted that the Likud leader was seeking to make cynical political capital out of people's fears. But when the time came for Mr Peres to put his question to Mr Netanyahu, he declined to do so.
The intention, clearly, was to signal, as Mr Peres had been trying to do throughout, that Mr. Netanyahu was a piffling political amateur. But some viewers may have interpreted it differently, suspecting that Mr Peres could conceive of no question for which Mr Netanyahu did not have a clever, calculated answer.