Nearly two months after his resignation as prime minister of Israel, Ehud Barak of the Labor Party has conceded to Likud Party leader Ariel Sharon. This comes after a landslide victory for Sharon in Tuesday’s special election.With 83 percent of the votes tallied, Sharon had garnered 62.1 percent of the vote to Barak’s 37 percent. Projections favored Sharon with 59.5 percent of the vote, defeating the incumbent by nearly 20 percentage points, according to CNN.com.Steffen Schmidt, university professor of political science, said the new 78-year-old prime minister, nick-named “The Bulldozer,” takes a very different stance from Barak when it comes to negotiating with Palestinians. He said Sharon views the negotiation process as a “zero sum” procedure, meaning one nation gains something because the other loses it.”Sharon is much less of a compromiser,” Schmidt said. “Sharon has always believed the security of Israel always comes first.”Aref Al-Farra, a Palestinian graduate student in business administration, said many Palestinians worry about Sharon’s past involvement with the Israeli military. He said it is comparable to the John Ashcroft situation — they are worried his past actions will influence his future decisions.Palestinians don’t want to fight, Al-Farra said, but they do fight for freedom.”Every person has the right to fight for their freedom,” he said. “If [Sharon] wants peace, I don’t think the Palestinians will keep fighting.”Mark Finkelstein, Jewish community relations director for the Jewish Federation of Greater Des Moines, said the important thing is the Israelis have spoken in a democratic way, saying they want change. He said Barak was influential in many ways, but the center of the country wanted something different, and “[Sharon] was the alternative to the status quo.”Finkelstein said the reason Sharon won with such a large percentage of the vote is “the fact that Barak seemed unable to impress upon the Palestinians how important it was [to the Israelis] for the violence to end.”Schmidt said the voter turnout was lower than expected because many Arab Israelis did not vote. He said these people feel neither the conservatives nor the moderates are listening to them. Despite the low turnout, Sharon’s landslide victory “definitely gives him a mandate,” Schmidt said.Schmidt said he expects to see two major changes in the way Israel deals with the Palestinians.”As a starter, the Israeli government is not going to put forth any more land for peace,” he said. The land on the borders of Israel is far too important to Sharon for security reasons, Schmidt said.He said the second change he expects to see is the response to Palestinian attack. He said the Israelis will “hit back much harder and much quicker.”Al-Farra said he does not expect much to change, but he is trying to be optimistic.”We do not have a problem negotiating with him if he wants to negotiate with us,” he said.Finkelstein said Sharon could help the peace process. He said Sharon is starting negotiations “based on the termination of violence.”Schmidt said he does not imagine the Palestinian/Israeli conflict will get much worse than it has been the last few months.”The violence will intensify, but it was bad before so we are not going to even notice it,” he said.The election results may have been disappointing for another player in the peace talks who is a big supporter of Barak, Schmidt said.”[Former President Bill] Clinton is definitely the big loser in this [election] — his guy is not in office” he said. “All eight years are now essentially sort of paralyzed or wiped off the map.”