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Netanyahu to seek Sharon's ouster after Gaza exit

Posted on: Tuesday, 30 August 2005, 07:46 CDT

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.

Source: REUTERS

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