The recent 22-day-long Israel Defense Forces Cast Lead Operation against Hamas in Gaza Strip and the largely unsympathetic international reaction it triggered shifted an already right-leaning Israeli public further right, analysts said.

Though Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, head of the ruling centrist Kadima party, and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, head of Israel's main left-wing Labor party, were instrumental in shaping the timing and outcome of the Gaza operation, their parties did not benefit in popularity relative to their input.

"Immediately following the onset of the war, Labor went up tremendously but it didn't stay up and it didn't go any higher," Dahlia Golan, professor of government at the Interdisciplinary Center, told Xinhua.

She noted that the timing of the Gaza operation had been in the planning for a while and was contingent upon several factors, including the end of the US Bush administration and Israeli caretaker premier Ehud Olmert's forthcoming leave of office.

While Israel chose to ignore ongoing rocket attacks from Gaza during the official six-month tahdiyeh or "calm," which ended in mid-December, it knew that when it killed six Hamas people, the radical Islamist organization would respond with the salvo of rockets that would allow for an Israeli military operation, Golan noted.

Still, in as far as the timing might have positioned Livni and Barak favorably for the Feb. 10 parliamentary election, Golan noted that it only managed to improve Barak's chances temporarily, and did not do so well for Livni because it placed security as the main issue on the agenda and eliminated a lot of the other issues that strengthened Livni's position.

Golan said that Avigdor Lieberman, head of the right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel Is Our Home) party, took advantage of the opportunity by playing on the Israeli public's security concerns and patriotism amid fierce international criticism.

Born and raised in Moldova, Lieberman wants Israel's 20-percentArab minority to prove their allegiance to the Jewish state, or give up their citizenship. He aims to re-divide Israel and the West Bank to switch Arab towns to the jurisdiction of a future Palestinian state, while Israel takes the Jewish areas.

Israel is under combined terror attacks, from within and without the country, Lieberman has said, noting that the internal threat is more dangerous than the external one and demands immediate attention.

Dan Diker, a senior foreign policy analyst at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, told Xinhua that Lieberman had siphoned off a lot of the Likud vote.

"The only reason that the Likud and Kadima are so close is because of Lieberman," he said.

According to the latest public opinion polls, right-wing Likud was a mere three mandates above Kadima. Analysts said that had it not been for Lieberman, Likud would be at around 34 mandates and Kadima at 24.

"It looks like Kadima is more popular but that is not the correct analysis. The Lieberman phenomenon has negatively affected the Likud lead. I believe that the Lieberman phenomenon is not against the Arab public but against the Arab leadership," Diker said.

In January, Israel's Central Elections Committee determined Israel's two Arab parties, Balad and United Arab List-Ta'al, ineligible to run in the upcoming 18th Knesset (parliament) elections on grounds that they don't recognize the Jewish state and call for armed conflict against it. Israel's High Court of Justice, however, overturned the committee's decision.

"It has become very clear to many in Israel that the Arab parties in the Knesset who incite wildly do not look all that different from Hamas, Syria or Hezbollah," Diker said. "That negative sentiment of the Israeli public towards the Israeli-Arab position against Israel has been the rallying cry of the Lieberman campaign."

Lieberman's slogan "without loyalty there is no citizenship," was especially effective in light of the Israeli public's suspicion of Israel's Arab citizens whose support for militants in the Palestinian territories is seen as the utmost form of betrayal.

Despite Lieberman's increased popularity, however, he still only comes in third place with 19 mandates, ahead of Labor, but lagging behind Likud and Kadima.

Regardless of whether Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu or Livni wins the bulk of parliamentary seats, neither is forecast to control even a quarter of the 120-seat Knesset.

As coalition bargaining thus becomes central to the formation of Israel's 18th Knesset, Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu, the Labor party and the Jewish religious Shas party are forecast to be the main contenders.

"It looks like it will be a Netanyahu, Lieberman, Labor government. Even if Livni has to form a government, the left can't get enough votes together in the Knesset in order to create a government," Golan said.

(Xinhua News Agency February 10, 2009)