February 2001 World Headlines

Wednesday, February 7, 2001 - Web posted at 12:28:21 PM GMT

Right-winger Sharon thumps Barak

JERUSALEM - Arch-hawk Ariel Sharon swept to victory in Israel's election yesterday, according to exit polls, as violence-weary voters turned against Prime Minister Ehud Barak and concessions towards the Palestinians.

The crushing triumph by the right-wing leader reviled by Arabs was likely to set Middle East peacemaking on an even more uncertain course, against the backdrop of a four-month-old Palestinian uprising that led to Barak's downfall.

As polling stations closed at 22h00, Israel's two main television channels declared Sharon the winner by a whopping 19 per cent over the humiliated Barak, who had portrayed the election as a choice between war and peace.

The exit polls confirmed what opinion surveys had predicted for weeks - that the Likud leader would smash the Labour Party chief in the battle of the former generals.

Although Palestinians had dreaded the prospect of Sharon as premier, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's adviser Nabil Abu Rdainah told Reuters: "We will deal with Sharon who has been elected by the Israeli people."

" But Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo described Sharon's election as "the most foolish event in Israel's history".

He said Sharon's hardline policies would kill the peace process.

A final turnout figure was not immediately available but Israel radio says it was a very low 60 per cent.

- Nampa-Reuters

Sharon said during the campaign he would form a national unity government that would include Barak.

"Israel needs peace.

There aren't two camps in Israel; one seeking peace and one stirring for war.

We are all united in the desire to put an end to wars," he wrote in Maariv daily on Tuesday.

Sharon, who has blasted Barak for making peace proposals to Palestinians while their uprising continued, vowed as he cast his vote in Jerusalem to keep the city for Israel alone.

"In my view (people) should vote for me because I will preserve Jerusalem, united and undivided as the capital of the Jewish people, the capital of Israel, forever," he said.

Sharon's first task will be to assemble a coalition from the existing Knesset, or parliament, because for the first time in Israel's history there is no parliamentary election alongside the voting for prime minister.

If Barak's Labour party refuses to join, Sharon would require the support of several religious and rightwing factions.

Many Israelis believe that political in-fighting will lead to a general election within a year.

PALESTINIANS VOICE ALARM Palestinians say Sharon sparked their uprising by his September 28 visit to a bitterly contested Jerusalem shrine.

They loathe Sharon for a warlike record that includes Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, which led to a massacre of Palestinian refugees in two Beirut camps by pro-Israel Lebanese militiamen.

But many Palestinians also resent what they see as Barak's harsh repression of the Intifada that has cost at least 382 lives -- 318 Palestinians, 52 Israelis and 13 Israeli Arabs.

A grassroots leader of President Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement vowed to step up the Intifada or uprising in response to a Sharon victory.

"I don't think there is any chance to negotiate with Sharon under any circumstances and we call on our Arab neighbours not to invite Sharon and not to be mediators with Sharon," Fatah leader Marwan Barghouthi told reporters in Ramallah.

Closer to home, Barak's repeated appeals to Israeli Arabs, who form more than 12 percent of the electorate, seemed to have fallen on deaf ears.

Witnesses said only a trickle of voters showed up at polling booths in Arab towns in northern Israel, despite apologies by Barak in his campaign for the October killings.

Barak voters were also hard to find on Jerusalem's streets.

"Jerusalem cannot be negotiated," said Simmy Zieleniec, 24, a Sharon supporter.

"Barak was prepared to negotiate it and that's why he'll lose the election.

There needs to be a change."

" DAY OF RAGE Defiant Palestinians had declared a "day of rage" for election day and Israeli soldiers lightly wounded at least 40 protesters in clashes in the West Bank earlier on Tuesday, hospital officials said.

The Israeli army said Palestinian gunfire wounded a soldier near Nablus and a border policeman in Hebron.

Peace negotiator Nabil Shaath said Sharon might destabilise the Middle East, but Palestinians would have to deal with him.

"If he is elected, and if he continues to push the same backward and regressive ideas he was pushing during his campaign, I do not see how this peace process can go forward."

" Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, founder of the Islamic militant group Hamas, said Barak and Sharon were cut from the same cloth.

"The two men have Palestinian blood on their hands," he told Reuters.

Nampa-Reuters

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