Israel Sees Political Free-For-All

The top Roman Catholic cleric in the Holy Land has given his annual Christmas message, with strong political overtones.

Meanwhile, the man running against Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in next month's elections is trying a new tactic to close the gap in the polls, reports CBS News Correspondent Robert Berger, while Sharon admitted he had some contact with the Palestinians, despite his ban on talks with them.

Also Wednesday, the man who assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 was back in court.

The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah, said Wednesday if the current Israeli and Palestinian leaders can't make peace, they should step down from power.

"We hope and we pray so that the feast which will come back next year will bring us better times," he said.

The Patriarch, a Palestinian, criticized Israel's decision to bar Yasser Arafat from Christmas Eve celebrations in Bethlehem.

Trailing badly in the polls for prime minister, Israel's leading dove Amram Mitzna sounded hawkish himself Wednesday.

If the Palestinians continue with terror, Mitzna said, Israel will "beat you to a pulp."

Sharon told Israel TV he is in contact with Palestinians despite his ban on peace talks as long as violence continues.

"Slowly the number of people who are prepared to talk peace is growing, and I maintain contacts with them," he said. "Whoever is prepared to talk peace, I am prepared to have contact with him."

The candidates were concentrating their appeals on a large bloc of undecided voters who are disillusioned with peace talks but unsympathetic to traditional refusal of Sharon's Likud Party to compromise with the Palestinians.

Mitzna calls for an unconditional Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and a year of negotiations over the West Bank. If the negotiations fail, he advocates drawing Israel's border unilaterally, pulling out of West Bank areas and dismantling Jewish settlements.

Sharon has said he would eventually accept creation of a limited Palestinian state in parts of the West Bank and Gaza, but he would not talk about it until all violence is stopped. Palestinians demand a state in all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip with its capital in the Arab section of Jerusalem.

Both candidates are angling toward the center from opposite ends of the spectrum, hoping to attract voters disaffected with Labor-backed peace talks after two years of Palestinian-Israeli violence but unwilling to buy into the traditional Likud line of no compromise with the Palestinians.

In Israel, people vote for a party, not a candidate, and parties hold internal elections to decide which members get seats in parliament.

But an election fraud scandal threatens to divert attention from policy toward Palestinians as the main issue in Israel's election campaign.

Sharon addressed the allegations for the first time Tuesday, pledging to expel wrongdoers from his Likud Party. His rival, Labor's Amram Mitzna, accused Sharon's Likud Party of playing host to organized crime.

A number of Likud members say they were asked for money by members of the party's central committee as the price of their support in internal elections. Police are investigating.

Despite the scandal, which is getting much attention in the Israeli press, polls show that Sharon's Likud Party is far ahead of Labor in the Jan. 28 election.

Addressing the growing Likud election fraud scandal after two party activists were arrested, Sharon declared, "Anyone who is found to have done something improper — I will see to it that he is expelled from the ranks of the Likud."

Among the names mentioned in the allegations of fraud is Omri Sharon, the prime minister's son, a backstage Likud wheeler-dealer. Sharon denied the allegations.

"I say this with certainty and full confidence: Omri is not connected to this issue, no connection, he's not connected to this at all."

Mitzna alleged criminals were entering the Likud.

"There isn't any doubt ... that organized crime is apparently infiltrating a party, a ruling party, and is trying in this way to make achievements," Mitzna told Israel TV. "This is the most grave connection between politics and money."

Israeli Yigal Amir appeared in court for the first time in six years, and expressed no regret for assassinating Rabin at a peace rally. He described the assassination as quote "an act of preventive intervention" avoiding the Hebrew words for kill or murder. He said he plotted the assassination for months and told several people about his plans. Oddly enough, none of those people informed the authorities.

In Bethlehem, the Israelis canceled a plan to destroy a house after they discovered that its owner has ties to U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-NY, and Israeli peace groups, Palestinians said.

Neighbors said the building was owned by Hussein Othman Issa, whose family run the Hope Flowers school, which promotes Palestinian understanding of Israelis, teaches its students Hebrew and preaches coexistence.

Family members said the ground floor of the house was rented out to local Palestinian laborers and they were unaware that the tenants might have been engaged in any violent activity.

Patriarch Sabbah said Wednesday that "if the present leaders do not succeed in making peace, there is only one solution: open the way to other leaders, perhaps they will succeed better where the present ones have failed."

Asked whether he was asking Arafat to resign, Sabbah said: "I'm calling to all who are unable to make peace to step down and first the Israeli authorities, because peace is in their hands, but if Arafat is unable to make peace, of course, let him also give a place to another."

Sabbah criticized Israel's decision to prevent Arafat from attending Midnight Mass in Bethlehem on Christmas Eve, calling it a "useless measure."

"No military authority in the world should stop a person from praying in Bethlehem, whether he is Muslim, Jewish or Druze," Sabbah said.

He suggested that if Israel does not ease travel bans in the West Bank on Christmas Eve, worshippers should pray at army checkpoints.

"From places of humiliation, hatred and death, as they are now, transform them into places of worship. Call for prayer gatherings there, may God inspire intentions of justice and peace to those who ordered to establish them," Sabbah said.