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Your support makes all the difference.Ariel Sharon held on to the leadership of Israel's Likud Party and demolished his rival Binyamin Netanyahu in yesterday's party elections.
If the polls hold true in the general election in January, it looks likely Mr Sharon will win another term as Prime Minister and lead Israel through the continuing Palestinian intifada, and possibly an American attack on Iraq.
Results from 50 per cent of polling stations showed Mr Sharon with 59 per cent of the vote among Likud members, compared to 38 per cent for Mr Netanyahu. A lesser-known challenger, American-born Moshe Feiglin, had three per cent.
For Mr Netanyahu, the results were disastrous. He waited so long to take on Mr Sharon in his political comeback, only to see it fall apart.
Israeli commentators predicted Mr Sharon had won by such a wide margin that he could afford to renege on a commitment to keep Mr Netanyahu as Foreign Minister if he wins January's elections – Mr Sharon was pretty ambivalent about whether he had made such a commitment anyway.
It is too early to write the political obituaries for Mr Netanyahu. He has been written off many times before and, at 20 years Mr Sharon's junior, he has time on his side.
But the immediate future last night appeared to belong to Mr Sharon. There has been little sign of hope for the peace process, and little for the Palestinians to celebrate either.
Though Likud's rival, the Labour Party, elected as its leader for January's elections a moderate who has promised to resume peace talks with Yasser Arafat if he becomes Prime Minister, the polls are predicting Mr Sharon will brush Amram Mitzna aside as effortlessly as exit polls said he had defeated Mr Netanyahu.
Mr Sharon, a hardliner who was once seen as beyond the pale by many Israelis, has managed to pass himself off as the middle path between the peace proposals of Mr Mitzna and Mr Netanyahu's extreme demands to expel Mr Arafat and tear up US proposals for a Palestinian state.
This contest was always going to be about which of Mr Sharon and Mr Netanyahu was best equipped to represent the hardline approach to the Palestinians. Any real debate over the future will have to wait until January – and Mr Sharon is expected to win then, too.
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