By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 28, 2006; A17

JERUSALEM, March 27 -- The Mahane Yehuda market, laden with artichokes, almonds and fish, has long been a gathering place for Israeli candidates seeking last-minute votes. This year the rows of covered stalls also provide a look at an electorate in transformation.

Among the potential voters is Yakov Aharon, a candy salesman who, like many Israelis, has been cut loose by the birth of a centrist movement and the loss of its towering leader, Ariel Sharon. Aharon has not decided which party he will choose or whether he will vote.

"Sharon was an old guy and clever," said Aharon, 46, who long supported the hawkish Likud Party. "No one can enter his shoes."

Israelis will elect a new parliament, and by extension a new prime minister, on Tuesday after a campaign season marked by complacency, disappointment and a sense of betrayal among many voters now searching for new political leadership. The result is that a large number of voters remain undecided, a floating segment that could determine a quarter of the 120-seat parliament, the Knesset. More Israelis than in any past election are expected to sit out the vote.

Neither Likud nor Labor, the parties at the center of Israel's political life for decades, is projected to win the plurality of seats that would carry the right to form the next government. Although it has slipped in recent polls, the Kadima party that Sharon created last November is still running far ahead, even though he is now hospitalized in a coma.

The campaign has emerged as a referendum on Sharon's unfinished program to separate the Israeli and Palestinian populations through a series of unilateral withdrawals from the occupied territories. He argued that Israel must act alone, after years of largely fruitless negotiations, to draw its final borders in a way that would separate a Jewish majority from the Arab population.

Sharon, a longtime member of Likud, began the process last year by pulling out the 8,500 Israelis who had lived in the Gaza Strip among 1.3 million Palestinians. But the move ran counter to Likud ideology, and Sharon left the party to form Kadima a few months later.

His departure, along with a change in the leadership of the rival Labor Party, set off what political analysts here called the "big bang" that has scattered Israel's fractious voters among more parties than ever. A number of smaller religious, ultranationalist and single-issue parties, all of them with devoted followings and well-coordinated get-out-the-vote efforts, are projected to gain seats at the expense of Labor and Likud.

"All in all, despite the image of a dormant election, you have about a million voters who are shifting parties," said Isaac Herzog, a Labor candidate who served in Sharon's cabinet. "That is why we feel that the election results are still open and not yet set. When Mr. Sharon was removed from the scene due to the tragic circumstances of his illness, clearly this opened up to much more fluctuations."

Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who assumed control of Kadima in January after Sharon's stroke, has outlined plans to withdraw Israelis from scattered West Bank settlements and draw Israel's border roughly along the line of the separation barrier due to be completed next year. Israel would retain control of the largest settlement blocs and Jerusalem under Olmert's plan, which he intends to carry out before the end of his four-year term if he becomes prime minister.

But party leaders have remained vague on the details, which Kadima candidate Haim Ramon acknowledged this week has been intentional. Questions remain over whether the military would stay in the evacuated areas, which settlements Israel would keep and how seriously a Kadima-led government would pursue negotiations with the Palestinians before withdrawing from the West Bank.

"Kadima is saying something very simple: Disengagement is a fallback position, but it is a position," said Ramon, who left Labor for Kadima last year. "It is popular because it is proposing something that the other two parties have never proposed -- that Israel take its future into its own hands."

Kadima today is made up of a mix of Likud and Labor defectors. The candidate list includes some of the most disparate personalities in Israeli politics -- from Nobel peace laureate Shimon Peres, who lost the leadership position in Labor in a vote last year, to Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, a hawkish figure who left Likud after also losing a party leadership vote.

Without Sharon at the top of the ticket, Kadima has dropped the equivalent of five to six seats in opinion polls -- leaving it with about 35 -- while the more rigidly ideological parties have gained ground.

"Everyone's in Kadima, so it provides the comfort of not having to make any decision at all," said Zeev Sternhell, a retired Hebrew University political science professor and author of "The Founding Myths of Israel." "Their position is that we'll reach decisions when we reach the bridges. The problem is there may be nothing on the other side when we get to them."

Avraham Levy, who arrived from Iraq when he was 2 months old, has earned a living from his vegetable stall at the Mahane Yehuda market for three decades and has voted Likud for even longer.

"It is a real party, with values and principles, unlike Kadima, where they have nothing in common," said Levy, 54. "I don't believe the polls, rule them out. Their hands will shake, and they will vote Likud. I'm counting on it."

His party, led by former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, is projected to win roughly 15 seats in Israel's parliament. It will probably not play a role in a Kadima-led government because of its opposition to unilateral withdrawals from Palestinian territory, which much of the public supports.

As Sharon's finance minister, Netanyahu pushed through privatization of state industries and cuts in health and welfare benefits that jump-started the economy but made him enemies among poor Israelis. Many were longtime Likud voters now turning to Labor, attracted by the populist economic proposals of former union leader Amir Peretz.

"Bibi's going to crash this time, and he deserves it," said Aharon, the candy vendor, using Netanyahu's nickname. "He took us back 20 years in terms of pay and jobs."

Not far from the market, Dania Minor pushed her 2-year-old son, Sean, along Mordechai Ben Hillel Street in a downtown commercial section of brand-name shoe shops and watch stores. A 30-year-old Hebrew teacher who describes her views as "left-wing," Minor said she intended to vote for Labor because she believes it is the most focused on social issues and reviving a peace process with the Palestinians.

Labor is projected to finish second to Kadima, which Minor described as "too right-wing for my views."

"I had a newfound respect for Sharon after the pullout from Gaza," Minor said. "But I don't really trust Olmert."