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It's official: Benjamin Netanyahu announces his candidacy to take on Ariel Sharon for leadership of the Likud party:
How much of his support is coming from anti disengagement forces in the States?...The move could set in motion an eventual split in the party, with Sharon bolting the Likud and starting a splinter faction of his own.
Netanyahu said Sharon, who founded the party in the early 1970s, had abandoned the path of the Likud, and had adopted the way of the Israeli left. "The man who got the votes turned his shoulder. He abandoned the principles of the Likud. He chose a different path, the path of the left," he told a mixed audience of reporters, supporters and a few vocal opponents...
Netanyahu was flanked by a varied group of supporters, including former cabinet minister Natan Sharansky, author Eyal Meged, Ze'ev Jabotinsky - grandson of the founder of Revisionist Zionism, and a number of anti-disengagement Likud "rebels," among them lawmakers Naomi Blumenthal, Michael Gorolovsky, and David Levy.