"While facing the most difficult and important negotiations in our history," he says, "we come to the table with a leadership that doesn't have an ounce of credibility left. We are represented by someone nobody believes in."Mr Meridor would like to run in harness with his fellow centrist Mr Shahak, but neither has so far conceded the number one position to the other. They are Dan Meridor, who resigned 18 months ago as finance minister; Benny Begin, son of the party's founder and former prime minister Menachem Begin; and Uzi Landau, chairman of the parliamentary foreign affairs and defence committee.Mr Meridor says he will run at the head of a new centre party. Although he shares Labour's commitment to the peace process with the Palestinians, he is not convinced that Labour under Mr Barak can make it.Three Likud rebels have announced they are challenging Mr Netanyahu. "While I salute him, I am not prepared to take the risk, just as no one would be prepared to be a passenger in an aircraft that I was piloting before I had learnt to fly."Mr Barak has not yet given up hope of persuading his former army deputy to join him as Labour's prospective minister of defence, but Mr Shahak seems determined to win on his own. The Likud is smearing him as a "leftist", while Labour has condemned him for splitting the left- wing vote and trying to parachute straight from 40 years in the army into the top spot in politics."Decorated with ranks and medals though he may be, Shahak is a man in his mid-fifties who has not lived even one day as an ordinary citizen," a former Labour minister, Yossi Beilin, wrote in The Jerusalem Post. Although he retired as chief of staff in the summer, he officially hung up his uniform only last week.
He has yet to announce the name of his new party, its programme or its other members.Both the main parties fear his disruptive effect. The 1999 elections will be the first time Israelis have had more than two competing candidates. If no one takes more than 50 per cent of the vote, a second ballot will follow on 1 June. The three main contenders are: Benjamin Netanyahu, the Likud incumbent whose coalition of seven right-wing and religious parties has disintegrated after only two-and-a-half years; Ehud Barak, Labour opposition leader, a former chief of staff and Israel's most decorated warrior; and Amnon Shahak, another top general who plans to run at the head of a centre party.The opinion polls put Mr Shahak ahead in a straight contest with either of the other two, but trailing both of the other front runners in a three- sided race. I thank the whole world for their support and prayers," she said.For six weeks she was confined to bed, and for three weeks she lay with her head tipped to the floor at a sharp angle.
The first of her children - two boys and six girls - was born normally on 8 December, and the others by Caesarean section on 20 December.The smallest, a girl named Odera who weighed just 10.3oz, died last Sunday. An ultrasound revealed that they had no bleeding or cysts in their brains. It was described as "dramatic good news" since that would be a sign of future neurological problems. Doctors put their survival at about 92 per cent and they are likely to stay in hospital until their normal due date, around 1 April.Donations have been flooding in to help the family. At the family's request no photographs or videotapes of the babies have been released.. ISRAEL WILL go to the polls on 17 May.
That much is clear, but who the runners and riders will be remains murky. So far, six candidates have entered the field for prime minister, but others may join the race. It could be that candidates spend so much money and fight so hard in the primaries that, by the time they reach the Presidential election in November 2000, they will have exhausted themselves.. THE MOTHER of the world's first successfully delivered octuplets was released from hospital in Texas yesterday, saying she felt great, despite the stresses of a highly traumatic pregnancy and the anxious struggle for survival that has claimed the life of her smallest offspring. "It wasn't easy," Nkem Chukwu said at St Luke's Episcopal Hospital in Houston in her first public appearance, "but I did it for the love I have for them." Ms Chukwu has spent the past three months in hospital. She refused doctors' offers to abort one, or two, of the foetuses to improve the chances of the others "I've never seen such a word in my Bible," she said. "I wasn't even going to give it a thought, a second thought." At a press conference, sitting in a wheelchair, she told reporters to stand up and give thanks to God for her successful delivery "I am blessed.