Netanyahu to seek Sharon’s ouster after Gaza exit
By Allyn Fisher-Ilan
TEL AVIV (Reuters) – Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s
bitter rival, Benjamin Netanyahu, launched a bid on Tuesday to
topple him as Likud party leader, intensifying a power struggle
sparked by the evacuation of Gaza settlers.
Likud polls show ex-finance minister Netanyahu would rout
Sharon in a primary if it were held soon, stirring speculation
Sharon may break away from rightists and forge a new centrist
party to run in an election due by November 2006.
Netanyahu, prime minister between 1996 and 1999, resigned
in protest this month over Sharon’s evacuation of all 21 Jewish
settlements from Gaza and four of 120 in the West Bank under a
U.S.-backed plan to “disengage” from conflict with the
Palestinians.
Netanyahu, hero of hardline nationalists in a Likud split
over the pullout, says the move will imperil Israel by turning
Gaza into an “independent terrorist base” rather than a model
for Palestinian statehood as U.S.-led mediators hope.
Most Israelis favor Sharon’s strategy, which entails ceding
more West Bank settlements as part of any final peace accord
with Palestinians but keeping Israel’s biggest population blocs
in the territory he regards as strategically vital.
Sharon stole a march on Netanyahu’s announcement by
lambasting his rightist rival on Monday as someone who quickly
“panics and loses his cool” under pressure and calling him
unfit to lead Israel in any peace process with Palestinians.
Netanyahu’s aides said Sharon was panicking under pressure.
Netanyahu received a political lift on Monday when a Likud
tribunal opened the way for the party’s hardline Central
Committee to convene in late September to slate a primary in
the minimum 60 days after that.
That would be months ahead of schedule and enable a general
election well before the due date in November 2006, leaving
Sharon little time to derail Netanyahu’s campaign. Sharon is
aiming for a third term.
The primary vote would mark the first time an Israeli party
has tried to topple a serving prime minister as its chairman.
SHARON ACCUSED OF BETRAYAL
Religious nationalists dominating Likud’s executive say
Sharon, 77, must go over what they see as his betrayal of a
biblical Jewish birthright to Gaza and the West Bank, lands
Israel captured in a 1967 war with Arab neighbors.
Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said the Likud mutiny arose
in part from frustration over Sharon’s disregard for a party
referendum that resoundingly rejected “disengagement.”
But cross-party polls have consistently shown Sharon to be
the most popular and respected Israeli leader and more likely
to win the next election as Likud leader than Netanyahu, 55,
who won applause for free-market reforms while finance
minister.
“This is a personal showdown between Sharon and Netanyahu
and later this month we will see one-to-one combat between
them,” commentator Hanan Crystal said on Israel Radio.
Sharon hopes for a boost from the World Summit at the
United Nations in mid-September where he is expected to reap
accolades for the first removal of Israeli settlements from
territory where Palestinians want to create their own state.
Sharon’s domestic predicament has spurred talk that he
might abandon the party he co-founded and form a new one able
to sweep in votes from Israel’s mainstream center-right.
Asked about that by a television interviewer on Monday,
Sharon said. “That’s a question we don’t need to deal with
now.”
Israel removed all 8,500 settlers from Gaza and 500 from
the northern end of the West Bank last week. It expects to hand
vacated Gaza areas to Palestinian rule after withdrawing troops
next month, but will retain control of the northern West Bank.
In Gaza on Tuesday, Egyptian intelligence chief Omar
Suleiman won fresh commitments from Palestinian militant groups
to a de facto ceasefire with Israel punctured by a weekend
flare-up of violence in the wake of the Gaza pullout.