Netanyahu Comes to Praise Sharon
By STEVEN ERLANGER The New York Times January 10, 2006
www.nytimes.com/2006/01/10/international/middleeast/10israel.html

TEL AVIV, Jan. 9 - Benjamin Netanyahu is saying nice things about Ariel
Sharon as the prime minister, in critical condition after a stroke, starts
to fade into history. But their own history has been far from affectionate,
marked by rivalry and even contempt.
With talk of that rivalry unseemly now - Mr. Sharon's health bulletins are
followed obsessively - Mr. Netanyahu, who is hoping to win election as prime
minister in March as leader of the right-wing Likud party, focuses not on
their disagreements but on their shared past.

His fondest memory of Mr. Sharon, he said in an interview on Monday in his
Tel Aviv campaign office, is his first. During the Middle East war in 1973,
Mr. Netanyahu and another future prime minister, Ehud Barak, met Mr. Sharon
in a small armored personnel carrier as he planned his daring crossing of
the Suez Canal that turned the tide of the war.

"Here we were, three future prime ministers, though no one knew it then, in
this small A.P.C.," Mr. Netanyahu said. "The meeting lasted maybe 10
minutes, but it was enough to form an indelible impression of this man and
his invaluable contributions to Israel and its wars."

All that, he said, made Mr. Sharon "one of the great generals that the
Jewish people and state have put up in modern times."

Had it looked as though Mr. Sharon would be able to run for re-election in
March, Mr. Netanyahu would have run against him arguing that Mr. Sharon had
damaged Israel's security by pulling out of Gaza. Instead, he is now
positioning himself as Mr. Sharon's former partner and heir apparent.

Just months ago, Mr. Netanyahu was accusing Mr. Sharon of having failed his
party and its principles by pulling Israeli settlers and troops out of Gaza.
Mr. Sharon, he said in late August, "has abandoned the way of Likud and
chose another way, the way of the left."

Mr. Sharon was no kinder. In a television interview at the time, he said of
Mr. Netanyahu: "To run this country, to deal with the most complex and
difficult problems, you need judgment and nerves of steel. He has neither.
In a situation of pressure, he gets stressed immediately. He panics and
loses control. I've seen him like that more than once, many times."

On Monday, in the interview, Mr. Netanyahu focused on his work as Mr.
Sharon's finance minister and lieutenant.

"We transformed Israel's economy from a monopolistic, high-tax, statist
economy into a more vibrant, free market one, and we rescued Israel from an
Argentinian-style collapse," Mr. Netanyahu said, noting that they had
challenged the unions, raised the
retirement age, opened up the banking market and endured a series of
strikes.

"It was a very important passage for Israel," he added, "and it was a real
partnership" between Mr. Sharon and himself. "Without that partnership, it
never would have happened."

Mr. Netanyahu and his allies were, of course, the main reasons that Mr.
Sharon decided to break with Likud and form a new centrist party, Kadima,
bringing some of Likud's best ministers with him.

But with Mr. Sharon lying incapacitated, Mr. Netanyahu stands to gain
politically from Israelis worried about security and the rising power of the
radical Palestinian movement Hamas. Mr. Netanyahu wants to bring a lot of
Likud voters who were tempted by Kadima and Mr. Sharon back into the fold
before the election. If he can, he could find himself back in government
even, just possibly, as prime minister.

Mr. Netanyahu refused to speak on the record about political strategies and
battles, saying he wanted to keep a public moratorium on political debate
while the country's proper focus was on Mr. Sharon's "battle for life."

But he portrayed himself as Mr. Sharon's most direct inheritor, especially
in the single issue that Israelis care most about: security and dealings
with the Palestinians.

Mr. Netanyahu broke with Mr. Sharon last summer. At the last minute, after
having led the rebels in Mr. Sharon's Likud Party who opposed the pullout,
Mr. Netanyahu suddenly quit the cabinet and his job as finance minister.

It was too late to stop the pullout, and Mr. Netanyahu was roundly
criticized for bad timing, poor judgment and even petulance, reminding
people of his decision in late 2000 not to challenge Mr. Sharon and to
forfeit the race for prime minister when Mr. Barak finally resigned, on the
theory that the coalition was too unstable.

After he quit the cabinet this summer, Mr. Netanyahu challenged Mr. Sharon
for leadership of Likud and lost. But then Mr. Sharon abandoned the party
anyway, forming Kadima and leaving Mr. Netanyahu the head of a right-wing
rump that looked in the polls to fall from 40 of Parliament's 120 seats to
barely 10 or 11.

But presuming Mr. Sharon is no longer a political factor, Mr. Netanyahu's
chances look improved in what has become a paler universe. Just 56, he is
still the most seasoned of the party leaders, and with Mr. Sharon absent,
the only one who has been prime minister. And he is widely regarded, even by
those who detest him, as one of Israel's best campaigners, with a quick,
articulate tongue and an even quicker counterpunch.

Mr. Netanyahu will emphasize that when he was prime minister, from May 1996
until May 1999, the number of terrorist attacks and suicide bombings was
quite low. He was elected in 1996 on a promise of security in the face of
suicide bombings that hurt the chances of the former Labor Party leader
Shimon Peres.

Mr. Netanyahu will repeat his mantra that the Palestinians will receive land
from Israel only in return for tangible acts, like the dismantling of
terrorist organizations and infrastructure, as called for under the first
stage of the peace plan known as the road map. He will remind voters that he
is willing to use disproportionate force if necessary as a deterrent to
attacks on Israelis, and he will use the expected strong showing of Hamas in
the Palestinian elections this month, and the spread of Islamic-based
terrorism to regional countries like Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria, as a
key part of his campaign.

Mr. Netanyahu has purged his Likud of an extreme right-wing group and says
he is eliminating the criminal elements from the party.
Asked if he must move Likud to the center, where Mr. Sharon wanted to bring
it, he said, "My job is not so much to move Likud as to articulate where
Likud is, where it's already moved."

His objection to the Gaza pullout, he insists today, was not to leaving Gaza
but to the manner in which it was done. "It's not a fundamental error to
leave Gaza, and I never said that," he said. "I said it's the way you leave
that counts, so that you leave and yet you take something when you go, so
you don't allow Hamas to claim a victory."

Already, initial polls show Likud getting not 10 or 11 but 17 seats, though
still behind Labor.

Mr. Netanyahu says he has learned much from Mr. Sharon. "I learned how to
wait - Sharon is very patient - and how to hold back from the media and the
importance of taking care of people," he said. "Sharon paid attention to
them; he spent an enormous amount of his time smoothing feathers. He could
drop you - he tasted revenge cold - but he was very patient and didn't move
until he had to."

Mr. Netanyahu, in his way, seemed to be savoring his memories. "He was a
master tactician," he said with some awe. "He took that from the
battlefield."