Israel's Prime Minister suffered a new setback in pre-election opinion polls today as Israeli and Palestinian negotiators sought a peace deal that offers his best chance for defeating a hawkish challenger.
The negotiators were due to plunge into a fifth day of talks in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Taba, despite the killing of an Israeli yesterday and the deaths of two Palestinians in violence on Wednesday night.
New opinion polls published today, just 11 days before the prime ministerial election on February 6th, underlined Mr Ehud Barak's need for a last-minute breakthrough to try to impress voters. The new polls predicted that Israel’s leading right-wing candidate Mr Ariel Sharon would win the election
They showed he was maintaining his double-digit lead of between 16 to 18 per cent despite a series of foul-ups this week in the Likud leader's carefully managed election campaign, which included being publicly chided by a schoolgirl who said he was unfit to serve as prime minister.
Mr Barak is under fire for failing to end a Palestinian uprising in which at least 312 Palestinians, 48 Israelis and 13 Israeli Arabs have been killed in the past four months. His peace policies have also been heavily criticised.
Reuters