An ultra-Orthodox Jew passes a poster for Ariel Sharon, who polls show leads the Israeli election race by 22 per cent

Fears of war drive voters to Sharon

THURSDAY FEBRUARY 01 2001

FROM SAM KILEY IN RAANANA

THE sounds of a tennis game filter through the bougainvillea hedges of the local country club and luxury cars glide by new glass buildings. In the largely English-speaking Israeli town of Raanana, the conversation has, however, turned from the latest cricket Test results to war.

In the last election for the Prime Minister 18 months ago, Barbara Grant and her husband, Cyril, a retired computer engineer and entrepreneur, voted for Ehud Barak, the Labour leader. Now, however, they feel under threat and believe that only one man — Ariel Sharon, the former general and Defence Minister — can save them. He is poised to trounce Mr. Barak in elections next Tuesday.

“I don’t like Sharon and I don’t like his history,” Mr Grant, 74, said. “All we really want is to live in peace with our neighbors, but we have lost faith in Yassir Arafat’s commitment to peace and in Barak’s ability to protect the State or deliver on peace.”

In England the couple, who emigrated to Israel in 1996 from Richmond, southwest London, would be Blairite. In Israel they are moderately religious Jews who hold no great affection for the Jewish settlements on the West Bank. They do, however, believe strongly that Jerusalem is their capital and that the 3.5 million Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war, and their descendants, should not be allowed back to their homes in Israel.

“We have been forced into the conclusion that there is no possible chance for peace when the other side wants to see the destruction of Israel. All we can do is defend ourselves and vote for a tough man who is capable of doing that,” Mrs. Grant, 53, a systems analyst, said.

Now deep foreboding hangs over the lawns of Raanana. In 1999, voters such as the Grants saw Mr. Barak as a former general, a commando, who had an historic vision and would safeguard Israel’s future by handing over the West Bank and Gaza to Palestinian control. “What we got instead is close to a war. We now have seen that the Palestinians have never been interested in living in peace with us, they want to chuck us into the sea,” Mrs. Grant said.

That is why she is prepared to turn the clock back 20 years, to a time when Mr Sharon represented the hardest of the hardliners, who led Israel into Lebanon and was prepared to “be as tough as it takes” to fight off the country’s enemies.

Did Mrs. Grant ever think of heading back to Richmond? “Oh, yes,” she admitted.

“Only if we get hit with a nuclear or biological weapon,” her husband cut in.

 

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