Without Sharon, will party have life?

The prime minister has formed a new centrist party.
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Likud, the hard-line political party leading Israel for most of the past three decades, has been marginalized overnight by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's defection, polls indicated Tuesday.
That reflects a long-brewing consensus here that "land for peace" with the Palestinians is not a slogan, but an inevitability.
When even Likud founders like Sharon defect, as he did Monday, it shows the rump party's opposition to territorial concessions is out of step with Israel's mainstream, analysts said.
Israelis have come to understand that "without territorial compromise, there won't be peace," said Mina Zemach, whose Dahaf Research Institute conducted one of the polls.
"The Israeli public is usually a step ahead of its leaders. The people moved to the center, and part of the Likud didn't move with it. ... They are to the right of the Israeli mainstream."
New party
Sharon formed a new centrist party to compete in upcoming elections after concluding that Likud rebels opposed to his recent Gaza Strip withdrawal would try to block his peacemaking agenda. Polls published Tuesday showed him capable of winning a third term leading a moderate coalition.
The polls also showed the smaller Likud plummeting to third place.
Dahaf's poll had Likud shrinking from 40 seats to 12 in the 120-member parliament. A Teleseker survey forecast it keeping only 15 seats.
Sharon's new party fared best, taking 33 seats and 30, respectively, in the two polls.
Labor, until recently written off as an irrelevant relic, took 26 seats in both polls under its charismatic new head, union boss Amir Peretz.
The Dahaf poll, based on interviews with 702 people, had a margin of error of 3.8 percentage points.
The Teleseker poll, based on interviews with 532 people, had a margin of error of 4.1 percentage points.
Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is expected to replace Sharon as Likud leader, cautioned against reading too much into early surveys. Likud, he predicted, would rebound.
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