Israeli Election Too Close to Call According to Latest Polls

Final opinion polls published today before next week's Israeli elections suggest the race between the rightwing Benjamin Netanyahu and his rival Tzipi Livni, the centrist foreign minister, may be too close to call.

Although all polls still put Netanyahu, leader of the Likud opposition party, ahead, his lead has shrunk and there are thought to be as many as 20% of voters who are still undecided before Tuesday's vote.

The latest polls suggest Netanyahu would take between 25 and 27 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, ahead of Livni's Kadima party with 23 to 25 seats. As always in Israeli elections, the future prime minister would still need to build a sizable coalition in order to lead a government.

Netanyahu's lead has slipped in part because of a sudden rise in support for the far-right leader Avigdor Lieberman, whose party, Israel Our Home, is now ranked third. For the first time in Israel's history the labor party, led by the current defence minister, Ehud Barak, may emerge only as the fourth largest party in parliament.

After the results of the election are published, the Israeli president, Shimon Peres, will consult with the leaders of the main political factions and will choose one MP to form a coalition within the next 42 days. Usually, the president would turn to the leader of the largest party, though the law does allow him to turn to others if they are more likely to form a majority coalition.

Asher Cohen, a political scientist, said a rightwing bloc led by the Likud still looked to be the strongest force in parliament, with more than the threshold 61 combined seats needed for a majority.

But writing in the Makor Rishon-Hatzofe newspaper, he said: "The gap between the blocs in the polls is not far from the standard statistical error, and if it shrinks further, the Likud bloc will ostensibly be in danger. On the other hand, the pattern of this bloc's being in the lead has been consistent over time."

A detailed poll in the Ma'ariv newspaper highlighted Lieberman's appeal, reporting that 69% of those questioned backed his campaign slogan "Without loyalty, there is no citizenship". Lieberman is pressing for a new bill that would force all Arab Israelis to swear allegiance to Israel as a Jewish state or lose their citizenship and with it the right to vote.

"His success?at least in the polls?indicates the degree of panic in Israeli society," Nahum Barnea, Israel's most respected columnist, wrote in the Yedioth Ahronoth.

"Lieberman is the scarecrow that panic-stricken Israelis want to place in the political cornfield in the hope that the Arabs are crows: that they will see two wooden sticks, one vertical for the body and legs, and the other horizontal, with an old hat on top, and take fright."

The Ma'ariv poll also found that 54% of voters said if Netanyahu won they wanted him to lead a broad national unity government, including both Kadima and labor along with his Likud party.

In the past, opinion polls have not always been accurate in May 1996 Peres, then the labor leader, appeared ahead in exit polls after the election until the final results the following morning showed his rival, Netanyahu, had in fact won a narrow victory to become prime minister.