Netanyahu set to win party primary ahead of U.S. poll

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a Likud party meeting at the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, in Jerusalem January 30, 2012, a day before results in the Likud primary election are announced.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is poised to win a new mandate to lead his right-wing Likud party Tuesday in a primary vote which may signal he favors an early parliamentary election to strengthen his hand with Washington.

National elections are not due until late 2013, and Netanyahu's decision to hold the Likud primaries now has raised speculation that he intends to call a national vote closer to the time of the U.S. presidential election late this year.

Political commentators say a Likud victory in a parliamentary poll held before or shortly after the U.S. vote in November would leave Netanyahu better placed to deal with Barack Obama, with whom he has had a frosty relationship, if the Democrat is re-elected.

Many Israelis worry that Obama, in a second term, may exert greater pressure on Israel to yield land for peace with the Palestinians, which could upset Netanyahu's clout in his pro-settler party and its core conservative electorate.

His coalition government of right-wing and religious parties has shown few cracks and opinion polls show that Likud would emerge on top if a parliamentary election were held now.

In the Likud leadership poll, Netanyahu's only challenger is a far-right settler who has no chance of unseating him.

"It's a done deal," Danny Danon, one of the Likud's most prominent legislators, said about the primaries.

"There is no tension or competition. Our main battle is with Kadima," he said, referring to the centrist, main opposition party led by former foreign minister Tzipi Livni.

Danon said he saw a possibility of Israel holding the general election later this year. While Netanyahu has not said he wanted an early poll, "he prefers to lead and not be dragged there," Danon told Reuters.

LIKUD CHALLENGER

Netanyahu's opponent in the Likud race is Moshe Feiglin, 49, who lost a party contest to him in 2007 but hopes to win more than the 24 percent of the vote he polled then.

Results of Tuesday's poll are expected to be announced by early Wednesday.

"I want to return the Likud to its real path," Feiglin told Reuters. Feiglin opposes Netanyahu's embrace of a Western goal of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

U.S.-sponsored peace talks stalled shortly after they began in 2010 in a dispute over settlement building in the occupied West Bank.

Feiglin applauded U.S. Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich for recently calling the Palestinians an "invented people" and thought Israel should pay Palestinians living in West Bank land they seek for a state to leave.

"They don't deserve a state, certainly not in land that God promised the Jews," Feiglin said.

Though Feiglin's views mirror those of many pro-settler lawmakers in Likud, he is supported by few in the party's mainstream.

But political analyst Jonathan Rhynold of Bar-Ilan University said Netanyahu had reason to be wary of Feiglin.

"The Israeli public is not where Feiglin is. Any rise in Feiglin's influence in the party can hurt Netanyahu," he said.

The Likud poll will be followed by a Kadima primary election on March 27. Both Kadima and the left-of-center Labor party have been actively recruiting popular figures, and some influential wild cards, such as former journalist Yair Lapid, have thrown their hats into the electoral ring as well.

(Writing by Allyn Fisher-Ilan, Editing by Jeffrey Heller and David Stamp)