Remaking Sharon

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A couple of weeks ago, Ariel Sharon sat in his shirtsleeves in the plush Tel Aviv office of his top campaign adviser. The 72-year-old Likud Party candidate in next week's prime ministerial elections was surrounded by his team of high-powered imagemakers, the professionals charged with persuading voters that the former general's reputation as a dangerous maverick is undeserved. At the end of the meeting to discuss his speaking schedule, Sharon raised his bulky frame and addressed his handlers. "I have to thank you all for making me look like such a very nice guy," he said. Then he raised his finger: "But I warn you that with one sentence I can undo it all." The spin doctors laughed in loud, nervous guffaws. They knew it was true.

In the past six months, Sharon's advisers have built an image of their candidate as a man of peace. Hard peace, perhaps, but a peace that makes sense to Israeli voters who are disappointed with Prime Minister Ehud Barak. It's an image deeply at odds with Sharon's reputation as an ironfisted, extremist adventurer, the man most associated with Israel's disastrous war in Lebanon and with the defiant Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

It's also an image that Barak is fighting desperately to smash. The image and reality of Sharon have become the main battleground of the election campaign. Though Barak went further than any other Israeli leader in offering concessions to the Palestinians, it is Sharon whose campaign jingle says he will bring peace. In his television spots, Sharon cuddles a lamb on his Negev farm and lovingly lifts his grandson into his arms as the sun sets over his wheat fields. Says Yossi Beilin, Barak's Justice Minister: "Sharon prefers the image of Grandma, rather than the reality of the wolf."

If Sharon can preserve that image until election day, he should win. There are some possible surprises, though. Israeli and Palestinian negotiators working in Taba, Egypt, could spring a last-minute peace deal on the world. Even if that happens, it may be hard to erase Sharon's 18-point lead in opinion polls.

If he wins, Sharon will be able to trace his victory back to a Park Avenue conference room. Last June, Sharon and his son Omri, 36, met American political guru Arthur Finkelstein and his assistant Jay Warshaw in the New York City office of Arie Genger, a wealthy supporter. Sharon was worried about what Barak was about to give up to Arafat in the name of peace. But he saw a bright spot: "I know that this will lead to elections, and I'll be the candidate to run against Barak." Finkelstein, who advised Benjamin Netanyahu, Sharon's predecessor as Likud leader, laid out a strategy. "You need to start showing that you support peace," he said, "but a different kind of peace than Barak. People are going to have to understand the real Sharon."