MIDDLE EAST: Benjamin Netanyahu may have reclaimed the leadership of the Likud yesterday, but the former prime minister has inherited a party that is reeling after the departure last month of Ariel Sharon and which now appears more hardline than ever.
Speaking to several hundred of the party faithful after midnight - Mr Netanyahu won 44 per cent of the vote to foreign minister Silvan Shalom's 33 per cent - he said the country was not "headed in the right direction", but that the first order of business was to "bring the Likud back to itself and then to the leadership of the country".
For now, that seems an almost impossible task. Mr Sharon's decision to leave the Likud and set up a new party has robbed the Likud not only of one-third of its lawmakers, but of a large chunk of its supporters.
In fact, many Likud voters who now say they will back Mr Sharon, blame Mr Netanyahu, who resigned as finance minister in protest over the prime minister's withdrawal from Gaza in August, for the rift in the party. Mr Sharon's departure was largely due to the strident opposition inside the Likud to his Gaza plan.
Polls published yesterday illustrated the Likud's dire prospects, predicting the party would win a meagre 13 seats in the March 28th elections - down from 40 in 2003 when Mr Sharon was re-elected for a second term as prime minister.
By contrast, Mr Sharon's party, Kadima (Forward), was up in the polls to 39 seats - the first indication that the recent mild stroke suffered by the prime minister, who was released yesterday from hospital, has not damaged his electoral standing.
A major challenge facing Mr Netanyahu will be to alter the image the Likud has earned as a strident opponent of any concessions to the Palestinians. That image will have been strengthened by the relatively strong showing of Moshe Feiglin, a far-right activist who won 15 per cent of the vote in the leadership primary.
With Mr Netanyahu's election, Mr Sharon's Kadima will be hoping to pick up more votes from Likud supporters who feel their party has drifted too far to the right. In an effort to drive home that sentiment, Kadima activists released a new bumper sticker yesterday with the word "Feiglinayahu" - a combination of "Feiglin" and "Netanyahu".
Labour Party leader Amir Peretz, whose campaign has focused almost exclusively on social issues such as poverty and a minimum wage, will also be pleased with the result in the Likud. The target of much of the former union boss's criticism has been the economic policies adopted by Mr Netanyahu, who slashed welfare benefits when he was finance minister.
Despite the Likud's woes, Mr Netanyahu's opponents know he is an astute campaigner. In 1996, he pulled off a shock victory when he ousted Shimon Peres as prime minister, having trailed by double-digit margins in the opinion polls just three months before the election.