JERUSALEM - In 1988, former Prime Minister Shimon Peres believes, a bus bombing swayed voters to support his right-wing opponent, Yitzhak Shamir. In 1996, a pair of suicide bombings killed dozens of Israelis, endangered a peace agreement and perhaps contributed to another defeat for Peres, that time to hard-liner Benjamin Netanyahu.
Now, in the midst of an Israeli election campaign in which security is again the prime topic of debate, Palestinians have launched a series of attacks that either by design or coincidence are likely to affect the outcome of the election.
In the past two weeks, at least 28 Israelis have died in bombings and shootings, the most recent being Thursday's suicide attack on a bus that killed 11 and yesterday's killing of an Israeli soldier guarding a settlement in the Gaza Strip. Newspapers are dubbing this month "Black November" as the death toll approaches a record set in March, when 40 people were killed.
It is not clear whether militant groups are trying to disrupt or intentionally influence the elections, or have merely discovered new opportunities in recent weeks. Israeli police say there are constant warnings of attacks.
Hillel Frisch, a senior political science professor at Bar-Ilan University, said attacks in past years have helped the hard-line right. "The spate of bombings in 1996 clearly brought Netanyahu to power," he said. "But I have a feeling that this time, it might improve the chances of the left."
Next week, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will compete against Netanyahu, his Likud Party rival, to determine who will be the party's candidate for prime minister in elections scheduled for Jan. 28. The center-left Labor Party chose its candidate, Amram Mitzna, on Tuesday.
Netanyahu firmly opposes the creation of an independent Palestinian state and pledges to expel Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Sharon says that the creation of a Palestinian state is inevitable and that removing Arafat from power could be counterproductive.
Mitzna is well to the left of Netanyahu and Sharon. He favors abandoning Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, renewing negotiations with Palestinians and, if those talks fail, unilaterally establishing a border between the West Bank and Israel.
A poll of Likud Party members released yesterday by the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth showed Sharon with an 18 percent lead over Netanyahu. But 78 percent of those polled favored Sharon's keeping Netanyahu as his foreign minister.
Meanwhile, Sharon has responded cautiously to the latest surge of violence, ignoring Netanyahu and his newly appointed defense minister, who have pushed for harsher measures.
After Thursday's bus bombing, Sharon held eight hours of security consultations but did not include Netanyahu, who led foreign ambassadors on a hospital tour to visit the wounded.
Frisch suggests that a beleaguered public might become disillusioned with the internal struggle between Sharon and Netanyahu and conclude that two years of military force have failed to end the Palestinian uprising.
"Israelis might be ready to try something else," Frisch said, adding that it might translate into more seats in parliament for Labor but not enough to win control of the government. Polls consistently show Likud trouncing Labor in January. Mitzna's proposal to negotiate without ending the violence appears not to have gained support.
"Until Palestinian society gives birth to a significant ideological and political movement that rejects the use of terror, it is difficult to see how Mitzna's doctrine could be accepted by the majority of Israeli voters," the newspaper Haaretz said in an editorial yesterday.
For its part, the Palestinian Authority has expressed support for Mitzna, calling him brave to support withdrawing Jewish settlers and promising unconditional negotiations. The authority is appealing to militant groups to stop the attacks.
Frisch said that organizations such as the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, are killing Israelis not necessarily to affect Israel's election but to undermine the Palestinian Authority, which has been severely weakened.
The Israeli army occupies most of the West Bank, has destroyed much of the Palestinian government's infrastructure and has kept Arafat virtually captive in Ramallah for months. Palestinian polls show support for Arafat dropping, and increasing for groups like Hamas.
Hamas, with Islamic Jihad, opposes any negotiations with Israel and routinely criticizes Arafat and his aides for trying to work out a political settlement. Many of their attacks are timed to derail negotiations.
"They don't want to go toward peace," Frisch said. "They feel the war is helping them in changing the internal balance of power."
Ismail Abu Shanab, a Hamas leader and spokesman in Gaza, said in a telephone interview yesterday that his group does not support either Labor or Likud, saying both have failed in the past to end Israeli occupation.
"The issue of Israeli elections is internal Israeli politics," Shanab said. "We want to see a government that is willing to withdraw and leave the territories. Sharon promised his people security and a military victory over the Palestinian intifada. We view our escalation as showcasing Sharon's failures."
He also rejected the push by the Palestinian Authority for his group to cease attacks. "This is not the first time the PA wants quiet for the sake of elections," he said.
"We are resisting military forces," he said. "Those are only facts that we have to face."