MIDDLE EAST: Kadima is likely to head a coalition after the Israeli election, writes Nuala Haughey in Jerusalem
Despite being in a deep coma for almost three months, Israel's burly former leader Ariel Sharon is playing a starring role in his Kadima party's campaign for Tuesday's parliamentary elections.
TV ads show grainy black-and-white footage of Sharon as a lean soldier fighting in Israeli-Arab wars - and no rally is complete without a huge portrait of the charismatic ex-general, who has been unconscious since suffering a second stroke last January.
That a comatose man who most believe will never regain consciousness is the Kadima party's election standard-bearer may seem somewhat eerie, but it is definitely effective.
Polls consistently show that Kadima (Hebrew for "forward") will secure about one-third of the 120 seats in the Knesset, a showing which would make it the largest party and allow it to head a future coalition.
Sharon's successor and former sidekick, Ehud Olmert (60), may be a far less compelling or popular leader, but he is standing on the shoulders of a giant.
"We like Olmert because he is continuing the work of Sharon," said Kadima supporter Avi Pery, a 24-year-old civil servant from Jerusalem, at a rather lacklustre party rally in the city this week. "He has all the support of the world which wants us to continue Sharon's ways."
Sharon's ways are the key to Kadima's commanding position. Before his incapacitation, he had dramatically transformed the country's political landscape, as well as his own legacy, with his idea of unilateral Israeli withdrawal from unwanted parts of the occupied territories.
By extricating 8,000 illegal Jewish settlers from the midst of 1.2 million hostile Palestinians in the Gaza Strip last summer, Sharon began his grand design to redefine Israel's borders on its own terms in a bid to secure its future as a majority Jewish state faced with an Arab demographic threat.
This policy of separation or "disengagement" from the Palestinians was a hit with mainstream Israelis keen to see an end to the bloody conflict but reluctant to negotiate with Palestinians whom they view with deep mistrust and antipathy after more than a decade of failed peace efforts.
Sharon's winning formula was to pull settlers out of peripheral occupied land in the territories while simultaneously cementing Israel's grip on huge West Bank settlement blocs. The final flourish was to enclose the Palestinians behind the vast and illegal West Bank separation barrier, which is still under construction. And Olmert is promising more of the same.
"We have to remember we have a new fashion in Israel; we are not talking about making peace, we are talking about disengaging," says Dr Gideon Rahat, a political scientist at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. "That is what helps people in the centre to say 'we hate the Palestinians, we don't care about the Palestinians, what is important is to build the fence and give up territories, but not by making peace'."
The recent victory of the radical militant Islamists of Hamas in Palestinian parliamentary polls only strengthens the trend towards separation without formal peace talks, adds Dr Rahat. "People think, 'They are crazy, why should we be there?'"
Even without Sharon's forceful personality, Kadima continues to command what political scientists call the centre or middle of the electoral spectrum. This is a very good place to be.
"The crucial question is who controls the centre because whoever does, in 97 per cent of cases, has had the power to form a coalition government," says political analyst Avi Diskin.
Sharon understood that his power was over the centre and this allowed him to take the daring move to form Kadima last November by jettisoning his right-wing Likud party, which was increasingly dominated by right-wing fundamentalists opposed to any withdrawals from occupied land.
Despite a recent slide in the polls, Kadima has remained a comfortable leader with a predicted 36 to 37 seats, followed by Labour (currently on a very healthy 21 seats) and then Likud, which the latest polls show is set to take a disappointing 14 seats.
The extremist rump of Sharon's Likud is now led by his former arch rival Benjamin Netanyahu, the pugnacious former prime minister known simply as "Bibi" who has been finding it hard to ignite public support for his hard-line positions.
If Bibi (56), the handsome one-time boy wonder of Israeli politics, cannot woo back traditional Likud voters, his days as party leader may be numbered. Desperation has shown in his recent apology for the pain caused by the free market reforms he introduced as Likud finance minister which improved the economy but slashed state benefits.
The bleak Dalit neighbourhood of the drab and dusty southern Negev desert city of Beersheba used to be solid Likud territory. With few jobs and fewer opportunities, residents of this struggling community of Jewish immigrants from north Africa and the former Soviet Union today view Netanyahu as the man who betrayed them.
Yaakov Sruya (53), an unemployed lone parent, said Netanyahu's reforms cut the monthly income for him and his three sons from 4,200 shekels a month to 3,000 (€767 to €535). With his mentally ill wife in and out of state hospital, the Moroccan-born former security guard relies on family support to raise his young family in this neighbourhood plagued by drugs and crime and mired in unemployment, poverty and welfare dependence.
"Myself, I'm going to vote differently this time, and a lot of other people I know will too," he said. "I was a Likud voter but I haven't decided how to vote this time or even to vote at all. There is no one to vote for."
But in a nation preoccupied with security and Israeli-Arab affairs, bread-and-butter issues alone rarely galvanise voters like Sruya. The Labour Party's recently elected leader, Amir Peretz (53), the son of working-class immigrants from Morocco and a former trade unionist, has been battling to put social issues on the election agenda.
"Social issues are very dominant but the media is trying to shift them from the agenda," he told The Irish Times during a campaign tour around Jerusalem this week.
"We went around Jerusalem today and no one asked me about kassams [ Palestinian rockets] or about the security situation because everyone knows that every government will deal with terror in the same way. I was asked about minimum wage, pensions, about single mothers, about retirees, so this is a big victory for us. It means the social agenda has been received." Whether this is the case will be clear in four days' time when the poll results are counted.
Barring any sudden upsets, Kadima's electoral victory is virtually a foregone conclusion.
The real debate will begin next week when Olmert opens talks on forming a coalition government. Will he go with Labour on the left, Likud on the right, or even the racist right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel is Our Home) party?
Only when Olmert puts his own stamp of authority on the next government will the man who has been Israel's acting prime minister for almost three months finally be able step out from Sharon's shadow.