The Front Page Section - Page A1
June 1, 1996 SHIMON PERES LOSES ELECTION AFTER CLINTON ENDORSEMENT. CONSERVATIVES TAKE POWER!
by Staff Journalists, The Daily Republican OnLine Newspaper
TEL AVIV DESK - Its over for Peres, the prime Minister that President William Jefferson Clinton personally endorsed for re-election recently. Peres is a loser and so is President Clinton.
Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the Conservative Likud Party, defeated Peres this week in national elections viewed as a referendum on his government's peace policies toward the Palestinians and neighboring Arab states. This after two days of counting paper ballots, the Central Elections Committee announced that Netanyahu won 50.4% of the vote to 49.5% for Peres--a razor-thin margin of fewer than 29,500 ballots.
The 46-year-old Netanyahu's victory represents the passage of power from Liberal Labor Party politics to Conservative Party leadership in the Jewish state. It is also the end of lifelong government employment for the 73-year-old Peres.
The prime minister-elect received calls from President Clinton, French President Jacques Chirac and defeated Prime Minister Shimon Peres congratulating him. Clinton, who had virtually campaigned for Peres has now issued a diplomatic invitation to prime Minister Elect, Netanyahu to visit the White House after the new government has been formed.
The Liberal Labor Party, lost 11 of its 44 seats in parliament, is in disarray in the elections' wake, with likely successors to Peres trying to saddle one another with the blame. "Just as success has many fathers, this loss is not going to be an orphan for long," said Abraham Diskin, a political science professor at Hebrew University.
At stake is the future of the 1993 so-called "Clinton brokered peace" effort between Israel and the Palestinians.. Since the elections last night, Netanyahu has sought to reassure Israelis and the international community that he will go forward with the negotiations. But during the campaign, he dismissed the land-for-peace policy set-out under the "Clnton brokered peace" as a failure and a threat to Israel.
For Shimon Peres, the Liberal Labor leader, the loss was a staggering rejection of the policy seen by most Israelis as appeaseement bteween Arafat and the assasinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
The victory by Netanhahu, a comparatively young and inexperienced politician was also a personal humiliation for Peres. At 73, he has served in every senior Israeli Cabinet office in a career spanning five decades--but he has never gained a clear victory in a national election. The defeat deprived him of what was almost certainly his last chance to shed an image here as a perennial also-ran.
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