Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's narrow victory in the Likud Central Committee Monday night has caused a dramatic turnabout in the balance of power between Sharon and his main rival, Benjamin Netanyahu, local newspaper Ha'aretz reported on Wednesday.

A Ha'aretz-Dialog poll of Likud members conducted on Tuesday night found that if the party's leadership primary were held on Wednesday, Sharon would beat Netanyahu by 47.6 percent to 33.8 percent, said the report.

The survey polled a representative sample of 512 of the Likud's approximately 140,000 members. The results have a margin of error of 4.34 percent.

However, the situation was reversed three weeks ago when Netanyahu edged out Sharon by six percentage points -- 44 percent to 38 percent.

Two weeks before that, Netanyahu would have won in a landslide, with 47 percent of the vote, compared to 30 percent for Sharon.

When respondents were asked how they thought the Likud central committee vote Monday night would affect the outcome of the primary, 46 percent responded that it increased Sharon's chances of winning, and 45 percent said that it decreased Netanyahu's chances of winning.

Following Sharon's victory in the central committee, his associates have indicated that he is now leaning toward running in the Likud's leadership primary instead of breaking away and forming his own party, which will remain true for precisely as long as he believes that he has a good chance of winning the primary.

But if Sharon continues to gain ground at Netanyahu's expense, it is very possible that he will enter the next Knesset (parliament) as head of the Likud something that would have seemed like a fantasy just two days ago.

As recently as Tuesday morning, his pollster, Kalman Geier, told Army Radio that it would be "very difficult" for Sharon to win the primary.

Source: Xinhua