Goal of Israeli left: second place

Israelis get a chance to participate in their favorite spectator sport when they go to the polls Tuesday.

There's no nailbiting about the victor, as a win for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Likud Party is pretty much foreordained. Instead, Israelis are riveted by the race for second place with even Likud rooting for its traditional rival, Labor, over the stridently secular Shinui Party.

The situation says as much about Israeli voters, bruised by the conflict with Palestinians, as it does about Labor's implosion. But it's the second place jockeying that underscores the central political problem here, a system that often leaves governments hostage to minority interests.

"A country where politics don't intrude in the daily lives of people can manage quite well with this kind of system," says Mark Heller, a senior researcher at the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv. "But Israel can't. It means the system is less able to cope with very serious problems."

Security tops that list. On Saturday, Israel conducted its largest raid into the Gaza Strip in two years, demolishing metal factories and killing 12. The raid came a day after Israel demolished four bridges connecting a Gaza town to the rest of the Strip, a response to Palestinian missile attacks on Friday.

These days, Likud also has a more unusual concern - that its main rival won't do well enough. Without a reasonably strong Labor coalition, Sharon can't form the durable government needed to pursue his policies. As one Likud official told local media, "This victory may be too sweet."

The Labor party has slid steadily in the polls, losing 1 1/2 seats a week to a current estimate of 17. The problem is part of an ongoing decline in Labor's fortunes. The party is strongly associated with the failed Oslo peace process. Its image as an elitist group is also out of step with much of the electorate.

Ethnicity plays a role too, as the party is seen as a stronghold of Jews of European descent. With identity a strong force in Israeli politics, especially among parties representing Jews of Middle Eastern descent, Labor has lost out.

"This is the tribalization of politics in which people's vote is as much determined by identity as it is by substance on security or economic issues," says Mr. Heller. "They look at parties and say, 'Do I identify with these people?' "

Labor's decision to join Likud in a unity government after the last election also cost it credibility. It offered voters no alternative to the Likud's stance on the conflict or the economy. And in the course of this election campaign, Laborites have been publicly squabbling, broadcasting the party's lack of unity.

The disagreements are largely over leader Amram Mitzna's policies, which are leaving Israeli voters cold. The former mayor of Haifa advocates immediate negotiations with the Palestinians, separation between the two peoples and an evacuation of the settlements, a stance that critics say rewards Palestinian militants.

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