THE SHARON VICTORY: NEWS ANALYSIS

THE SHARON VICTORY: NEWS ANALYSIS; Old Soldier, New Battle

By DEBORAH SONTAG

Published: February 8, 2001

JERUSALEM, Feb. 7—
After a stubborn, lumbering climb over several decades to reach the Israeli political pinnacle, Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon must now move like a gazelle. He has little time to build a working coalition from an unruly Parliament, and the conflict with the Palestinians is not something that will go lightly to the back burner.

Mr. Sharon's words indicate that he wants to redefine himself and confound the world's expectations. He does not want to sit atop a narrow right-wing government, and he does not want to be a bull in a china shop diplomatically. He seeks to be tough and conciliatory and to last longer than the beaten Prime MinisterEhud Barak as the leader of this volatile land. But circumstances, partisan politics and his own adventurer's disposition could quickly undermine him.

Mr. Sharon's Likud Party holds only 19 seats in the 120-member Parliament. The right-leaning Likud and the left-leaning Labor used to be the two big voting blocs in the Parliament, but now they are shadows of their former selves amid a multiplicity of sectarian parties.

The patchwork Parliament was not remade on Tuesday in Israel's first election for the prime minister's office alone, and so it did not expand Mr. Sharon's tiny power base or become more manageable overnight.

Mr. Sharon's natural associates are indeed the right-wing members of the broader nationalist camp. But they are an internally combustible lot, especially given the mix of ultra-Orthodox and Russian immigrant