Tough fight for votes from the old country

By PHIL REEVES

JERUSALEM - Ariel Sharon speaks dreadful Russian, but he will swallow his pride if it helps his decades-old dream of confounding his enemies by becoming Israel's Prime Minister.

If that means sounding like a 4-year-old, then so be it.

The Likud leader knows that the large "Russian" vote in Israel could determine the outcome of tonight's election. He also knows that immigrants from the former Soviet Union are a disgruntled, unpredictable constituency whom he will need to coax and cajole until the last minute if he is to emerge the victor.

All this explains why the 72-year-old ex-general found himself last week standing in front of a crowd in the rundown town of Afula, murdering one grammatical rule after another as he declared in broken Russian that Israel is a "small, beautiful, talented, and difficult country - but she is "nasha, nasha, nasha" - ours, ours, ours!"

The Russians in the audience were delighted, leaping to their feet to applaud while the snowy-haired Sharon beamed down at them. There were wide grins, too, from one of the other political heavyweights on the platform at his side: undeterred that he was Ehud Barak's Interior Minister not so long ago, Natan Sharansky, the ex-Soviet dissident turned Israeli right-winger, is on the campaign trail again, fighting for the other side.

It is a battle over votes for which the fight is hard and dirty. The Russians comprise about 20 per cent of the Israeli electorate - a true prize and potentially, the decisive factor. Both sides have carried TV campaign advertisements with Russian subtitles. Both sides churned out reams of Russian leaflets and posters. On the stump, Sharon has made a special point of heaping praise on Second World War veterans, for the ears of the old timers who fought with the Soviet Army against the Nazis.

Surveys suggest that the Russian immigrants support Sharon by a ratio of two to one. He can take heart in the knowledge that in the last three elections, the majority of the Russians - a catch-all phrase that also sweeps in Ukrainians, Moldovans, Belarussians, and others from the former USSR - have voted against the incumbent. They played a key part in helping Barak beat Benjamin Netanyahu in 1999.

Sharon is also undoubtedly helped by the fact that a proportion of the one million ex-Soviets who have poured into Israel in the past decade know little, or were too young to care, about his besmirched past.

The Israeli left still shudders when they recall how Sharon led Israel into its disastrous war in Lebanon, or the disgrace that befell him and all Israel over the Sabra and Chatilla massacres in 1982, or the brutal slaughters and assassinations committed against Palestinians by soldiers under his command. But - though there are liberals among the Russians - these concerns do not appear to trouble the majority.

"Sharon is very good because he will make the country strong again, said Yosef Gelman, aged 65, a physical instructor who immigrated from Ukraine 10 years ago. "Under Barak it just grew weaker and weaker."

In past years, social and religious issues have played a large part in determining the votes of the Russians, who are mostly secular. But this is a one-issue election. Security is everything.

It is a topic that matters to former Soviets. Many of them came to Israel to escape the crime, social collapse and the threat of civil war that swept across the former USSR in the wake of its collapse. Even those new arrivals who were not practising Jews - and they are many - saw their new home as a safe haven. The intifada has made them feel deeply insecure. And it looks as if Ehud Barak will pay the price.

- HERALD CORRESPONDENT

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