He’s no doubt pondering what all the candidates are pondering: how to win the Russian vote. Since Netanyahu’s fragile Likud coalition collapsed last month over the Palestinian land-for-security deal, at least seven contenders have entered the race for the prime ministership. With Labor and Likud looking more and more alike as they move toward the political center, the contest promises to be one of the tightest in Israeli history. And Russian immigrants may well hold the key to victory. Over the past eight years, Israel’s Russian immigrant population has swelled from 200,000 to 1 million. In 1998, 48,000 came, accounting for 90 percent of the year’s total immigration. They now make up 20 percent of the electorate–a huge bloc in a country riven by coalition politics. In the last election, 50 percent of Russian immigrants voted for Sharansky’s party, which won a pivotal seven seats and adopted a conciliatory role in Netanyahu’s coalition. Although Bibi did little for them, 60 percent of Russian immigrants still support him, says pollster Hanoch Smith. But many have grown disenchanted with him for placating the ultra-Orthodox by banning the import of nonkosher meat and failing to protect new immigrants from religious fanatics who claim they are not really Jews. Now everyone is courting the Russians. ““All the big parties are taking us very seriously,’’ Sharansky told NEWSWEEK. “"[The Russian vote] will have a major influence.''
Top priority on the Russian immigrants’ agenda: respect. Many believe they are unfairly treated as scapegoats. Indeed, many Israelis say they perceive Russian men as drunks and mafiosi and Russian women as prostitutes. And as the newest arrivals, Russians have suffered at the hands of other poor immigrants, who view them as job-stealers. Last fall in Ashkelon, where Russians make up 30 percent of the population, a Moroccan approached a table of young Russians at a beachside cafe and told them to stop speaking their native language. In the ensuing argument, a recent Russian arrival–clad in his new Israeli Army uniform–was stabbed to death. ““There is anti-Semitism here in Israel,’’ says Ilyanora Rutstein, a 20-year-old waitress at a Russian restaurant near where the attack took place.
Such blatant resentment against the new Russians has helped mobilize them. They mobbed the polls in municipal elections last November, giving 100 Russian candidates seats in city halls, up from just 20. That was the first sign of how critical Russian support will be in the spring election. It spurred Lieberman, who immigrated to Israel 20 years ago and served as Netanyahu’s chief of staff, to establish the new party Yisrael Baitainu, or ““Israel Is Our Home.’’ Campaigning on an antiestablishment platform, he has promised to break the ““thin layer that holds onto all the positions of wealth and power.’’ In a press conference last week, he even called Israel a ““police state.’’ But natives see Lieberman, a for- mer nightclub bouncer who speaks heavily accented Hebrew, as a crass bully. And political analysts believe he’s not nearly as radical as he seems; most say he’s serving as a stalking horse for Netanyahu to siphon Russian votes away from Sharansky.
The Yisrael Ba’aliyah leader, meanwhile, insists he remains a beacon of stability in a shifting ideological sea. ““What is one week the center is next the right and the next it’s the left,’’ says Sharansky. He vows to maintain his platform of better housing and jobs for Russians. Neither Russian candidate has much to fear from Labor, which has proved inept at luring Russian voters. Marina Solodkin, a Yisrael Ba’aliyah Knesset member who used to work as an adviser to Labor, says the party underestimates the intelligence of Russian voters. ““They are playing sheysh-beysh,’’ she says, referring to the Middle Eastern game of chance. ““We Russians play chess.’’ Now they have the opportunity to crown the next king.
