Israeli right: purists vs. pragmatists

Israel's premier right-wing party for more than three decades took its name from three parties that merged to form it, spelling the acronym Likud - a word in Hebrew that connotes unity and consolidation.

But following the dramatic decision earlier this week by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to leave the party and start a new centrist one, the Likud is fast scattering into smaller pieces that do not constitute a whole.

The break separating right from right, Mr. Sharon's chief strategist says, is the result of what might be summarized as an inevitable split between pragmatists and purists. While the purists are holding fast to their dreams of having a "Greater Israel" that includes the West Bank and Gaza, the pragmatists - many of whom are joining Sharon - have come to view a Palestinian state in those territories as an inescapable conclusion.

Unless it can resolve this divide within its own ranks, Likud will have a much harder time capturing the Israeli vote when the country goes to the polls next spring. While Sharon has already attracted prominent centrists from both the left and the right, some of Likud's pragmatists have stayed put, leaving the party's leadership and future course up for grabs.

"It's very clear that the party cannot have two souls," says Eyal Arad, president and founder of Arad communications, which will play a key role in Sharon's election campaign. "Therefore, a split, in my view, in the long run, was basically unavoidable."

The acceptance of the international peace process known as the road map was "a conceptual revolution," says Mr. Arad, who, in showing up with an almost-shaved head and casual blue-and-white striped sweater to a press conference with foreign journalists this week, seemed to cut the figure of an Israeli James Carville.

"We had a dream that Jews could live everywhere in the 'Greater Land of Israel,' " says Arad. "I believe it was a good dream ... but it crushed against the walls of reality.... It was the leadership of Ariel Sharon, and the expertise on security matters that he carries ... that allowed right-wingers like myself to accept that reality and to accept the vision of two states, living side by side, without terrorism."

Polls indicate that most Israelis have also accepted that position, leaving some analysts to argue that Likud's best chances lie with a move toward the center.

"Even in the last election, in 2003, it was more a victory of the center," says Shmuel Sandler, a political science professor at Bar-Ilan University, near the capital Tel Aviv. For that reason, Sharon's right-wing competitors whom he left behind in the Likud are now mostly attacking him less on policy than on "credibility issues."

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