Israel's Houdini: Netanyahu's likely triumph.

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dissolved parliament last January and called for early elections, he seemed to be setting the stage for what would amount to a decisive referendum on the future of the Middle East peace process.

As the May 17 balloting approaches, however, the campaign unfolding in Israel does not resemble a foreign-policy referendum so much as a showdown in a long-simmering cultural war.

The election, it now appears, will not be derided on urgent questions of how to proceed in talks with the Palestinians, much less on the still-disputed principle of whether to continue the peace process at all. Rather, the vote will turn on the angry religious, ideological, and ethnic divisions that have strained Israel's body politic for decades.

This is bad news for America and the West, which have a strong interest in seeing the Middle East achieve some sort of stability. It's worse news for Israel, which sorely needs healing rather than further fraying of its tense social fabric.

It's good news for Netanyahu, though. Three-fourths of Israelis support the peace accords with the Palestinians that were initialed in Oslo in 1993 by the government of the assassinated prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin. Netanyahu opposed the so-called Oslo accords at the time; as prime minister he has managed to steer them into a ditch. An election decided on issues of war and peace would almost certainly end Netanyahu's career.

By recasting the vote as a contest of ethnic and social resentments, though, he stands a very good chance of reelection. It's a tribute to Netanyahu's prodigious political skills, supporters and critics agree, that he's managed to change the subject so handily.

Netanyahu's math is simple. Although three-fourths of the population favors the peace accords, about one-half harbors deep antipathy toward the opposition Labor party, the accords' main sponsor. Anti-Labor animus comes in various colorations: Orthodox Jews who dislike Labor's secularism; Soviet immigrants who detest anything resembling socialism; Sephardic Jews of Middle Eastern origin who resent Labor's paternalistic rule in Israel's early years. The antipathies are profound, unrelated to policy, and seemingly resistant to change.

Netanyahu has united these groups into a governing coalition by focusing on their grudges and fudging their foreign-policy differences. It is, however, an unstable coalition, virtually incapable of making decisions on the peace process. Netanyahu held it together for thirty months by avoiding decisions, employing stalling tactics that kept the Israeli-Palestinian dialogue alive, but just barely. When last November's Wye River Agreement forced him to make decisions, the coalition fell apart.

His surviving even this far came at a high cost. Relations with the Palestinians are strained to the breaking point. U.S.-Israeli ties are at their lowest point in decades. Israeli society is as bitterly divided as it has ever been.

The strains have left the prime minister standing, but wounded. Much of his own Likud party is in open revolt. His relations with the military high command, which tends to support the peace process, are frosty. Three top leaders of Likud, including his former justice and defense ministers, bolted to form a new, centrist opposition party. They were joined by the outgoing military chief of staff. Still more defectors have crossed the aisle to join Labor. The array of forces dedicated to Netanyahu's downfall today is truly impressive.

Still, the outcome of the May vote is by no means assured. Indeed, polls suggest Netanyahu may well be reelected. For all his failures of policy and governance, he remains popular on the street.

Part of his advantage is the very strength of his opponents. Former defense minister Yitzhak Mordechai, leader of the new Center party, is a popular and charismatic ex-general with a strong personal following. The Labor party leader, Ehud Barak, is a much-decorated former chief of staff, widely seen as a protege of Rabin. Both challengers support the peace accords. Both see themselves as the alternative to Netanyahu. Right now they are hurting each other more than they are hurting Netanyahu.

Nothing of substance separates the two challengers or their parties, except one thing: The centrists are convinced Labor cannot win. Resentments among Orthodox Jews, Soviet immigrants, and Sephardic Jews run too deep. Mordechai, himself a Sephardic Jew born in Iraqi Kurdistan, believes he can woo those voters away from Likud by offering a platform that resembles Labor's, but without Labor's baggage.

Polls suggest Mordechai is right about Labor, but wrong about himself. The deeply ingrained habits of Israeli voters leave Mordechai running a distant third, taking about 20 percent to Netanyahu's 35 percent and Barak's 30 percent.

Under current law, if no candidate wins a majority of the popular vote, the top two meet in a runoff three weeks later. Polls show the runoff as a Barak-Netanyahu tie, 45 percent to 44. In such a close race, the smart money is on Netanyahu.

Ironically, if Mordechai faced Netanyahu head-to-head in a two-way race he would win handily, 49 percent to 38. But there is almost no chance of Mordechai reaching the runoff.

Some observers are betting on a last-minute Barak-Mordechai deal to share the first and second slots in a combined Labor-Center slate. Nothing prevents it except competing egos and the question of who leads. Insiders call it wishful thinking.

Complicating the prospects of an opposition merger are Barak's latest moves to broaden Labor's appeal. In early March he completed lengthy negotiations with two key groups representing demographic sectors where Labor is weakest.

One deal gave the number-three slot on Labor's parliamentary slate to David Levy, a veteran Likud leader and former foreign minister with a strong following among working-class Sephardic Jews. The other deal was with Meimad, a small group of Orthodox Jewish intellectuals who support the peace process. Barak hopes Levy and Meimad will mollify a few thousand Sephardic and Orthodox voters - just enough to turn the race.

Will the gambits work? Early polls are not encouraging. Barak remains mired in his dead heat with Netanyahu, despite his efforts. That seems to confirm the Center party's view that Labor is demographically doomed. Israel's voters may simply be too deeply entrenched in tribal loyalties to switch affiliations, regardless of party policies and their impact on Israel's future.

Unless Ehud Barak and Yitzhak Mordechai can find a way to bury their egos and join forces, therefore, Israel could be headed for four more years of Benjamin Netanyahu.

J.J. Goldberg is a syndicated columnist and the author of Jewish Power: Inside the American Jewish Establishment (Addison-Wesley, 1996).