Mr Netanyahu, though sagging in the polls, still retains a tight hold on the Likud party machine.
ECONOMIST: Can Binyamin Netanyahu��s government in Israel survive?
Ariel Sharon, the current leader of the Likud party, hopes to unite all the nay-sayers under his banner.
He became Israel's first Iranian-born president and the first from the Likud party.
The first, and perhaps most important, contest of the new election campaign will be the battle for the Likud party's nomination.
One was Vladimir Jabotinsky, whose ideas inspired both the Irgun Zvai Leumi resistance movement in wartime Palestine and the Likud party in present-day Israel.
Between 2006 and 2008, he worked as chief of staff for Netanyahu, who, as the leader of the Likud Party, was then in the opposition.
He will face Binyamin Netanyahu in a contest for the leadership of the Likud Party on November 28th, and a general election two months later.
On February 14, one of the Knesset's most influential leaders on national security matters, the Likud Party's Uzi Landau , wrote President Clinton a stern letter.
In 1969, aged 24, the town elected him as Israel's youngest mayor and eight years later he was elected to the Knesset (parliament) for the Likud party.
On the whole, America's Jewry has been a liberal body, aligning itself with Israel's Labour Party rather than the Likud Party of the present prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu.
Three ministers of the Likud party resigned from Sharon's Cabinet on Thursday, following instructions from Likud chairman Benjamin Netanyahu -- Agriculture Minister Yisrael Katz, Education Minister Limor Livnat and Health Minister Danny Naveh.
The minister in charge of government efficiency, Michael Eitan of the Likud party, which has both religious and secular supporters, suggests that the computers be programmed to receive online requests from citizens on the Sabbath but to respond to them only afterthe Sabbath.
ECONOMIST: Another row between the religious and the secular in Israel
Last week, Sharon left the Likud Party -- which he helped found in the 1970s -- and announced the creation of a new party, called Kadima -- officially separating himself from those in Likud who protested his pullout of Israeli settlers and troops from Gaza.
Barak currently trails hard-line challenger Ariel Sharon, leader of the conservative Likud party, in the polls leading up to the election.
The more likely contenders, Tzipi Livni of Kadima and Binyamin Netanyahu, head of the opposition Likud party, have also stayed mum about the scandal.
He recently broke with the conservative Likud party he helped found -- which did not support his pullout from Gaza and parts of the West Bank -- and is running for re-election as head of the moderate, newly formed Kadima Party.
Many politicians, past and present, from the conservative Likud party are lifelong fans.
The candidate of the opposition Likud party, they say, can always count on help from long-established organisations that support West Bank settlements and religious institutions and are adroit at fund-raising abroad.
Mr Lubotzky and his party colleagues sided with the opposition in the vote on July 29th, as did Dan Meridor of the ruling Likud party, an erstwhile minister of finance who has now thrown down an open challenge to Mr Netanyahu's leadership.
One might have intuited that the striking contrast between the sober-minded Likud party and the delusional and defeatist Kadima and Labor parties that was brought so prominently to the fore by the Likud primary would have been the central message that Netanyahu chose to convey in the days that have followed Monday's vote.
Mr Lieberman is drawing voters away from the Likud, which means a narrowing of the gap between the Likud and Kadima, the centrist party founded in 2005 by Ariel Sharon and now led by Ms Livni.
Israel held elections Tuesday which resulted in a near-tie between Livni's centrist Kadima party and the right-wing Likud party, led by Benjamin Netanyahu.
Key members of the Likud, the main opposition party, said they would rather leave the party than participate in a Labour-Likud coalition under Mr Barak.
Those were three high-priority issues for the new centrist party Yesh Atid, which emerged as the second largest party in the January elections after Netanyahu's Likud party.
The precariousness of the prime minister's position was embarrassingly demonstrated on July 10th, when the Knesset voted by 54 to 52 in favour of a motion of no confidence in the prime minister put forward by the right-wing Likud party not far short of the 61 votes needed to topple Mr Barak.
As a mayoral candidate, Barkat has assembled a candidates list for his party comprised of members of the Likud, the Gil Pensioners Party, the Green Party and Labor.
Mr Sharon went on to become leader of the right-wing Likud Party in opposition after Mr Netanyahu's decisive defeat in the 1999 general election.
And this time, following the creation of Kadima, the Likud is even less a party of the centre than it was a decade ago.
But they are hardly the vision of Mr Netanyahu's Likud Party loyalists or of the other rightist and religious parties allied to the Likud in the present coalition.
In the outgoing parliament, Mr Netanyahu's Likud party, together with the ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beitenu, have 42 seats.
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