Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the opposition Labour party on Monday took the first step towards forming a coalition government to see through the withdrawal of Jewish settlers from Gaza in the face of a growing revolt within the prime minister’s Likud party.
After Sharon asked the Labour leader, Shimon Peres, to join his administration on Monday, the prime minister warned rebels in Likud that he will call early elections if they block the coalition. The two party leaders agreed to begin negotiations next week.
But there is also resistance within Labour, whose MPs will be balloted on Tuesday on whether to join the administration. Some believe they risk legitimising a scheme by Sharon to use his ”unilateral disengagement” plan as a cover to entrench 400 000 Jews in the West Bank and to annex large parts of the occupied territories.
Peres said while his party’s interest might lay in remaining in opposition, the good of the country requires it to make possible the unilateral disengagement that was originally Labour’s own policy.
”I will not forgive myself if, because of our hesitations over whether to join the government, the disengagement is not implemented,” Peres said. ”We must leave Gaza, we must take down the settlements.”
Peres has demanded that the withdrawal plan be speeded up as a condition for joining the coalition. As things stand, the settlers are supposed to be out of Gaza by September 2005. The Labour leader also wants negotiations with the Palestinians resumed.
Likud rebels are distributing a petition among MPs against the coalition government.
”The Labour party’s joining will turn the Israeli government into a leftist, secular government,” the petition says.
Others in Likud are discussing whether Sharon can be removed as party leader and prime minister.
Sharon was only able to force the Gaza withdrawal plan through the Cabinet last month after dismissing two ministers from a far-right party who opposed the move.
Likud rebels have warned him not to offer Labour the seats of other right-wing ministers to further reduce Cabinet opposition to the withdrawal plan. Peres is reported to be eyeing the post of foreign minister, which is held by another opponent of removing the settlers, Silvan Shalom.
Uzi Cohen, a member of Likud’s central committee, told party activists on Monday that if there is any attempt to remove Shalom ”there will be World War III here”.
The discussions came as two senior White House officials arrived in Jerusalem to discuss limits on settlement expansion in the West Bank and Sharon’s repeated breach of his promise to Washington to dismantle Jewish outposts.
Steve Hadley, the Deputy National Security Adviser, and Elliot Abrams, the head of the Middle East desk at the National Security Council, are also to meet the Palestinian Prime Minister, Ahmed Qureia.
The officials will not be meeting Yasser Arafat because the US no longer recognises him as the Palestinian leader.
Arafat outraged Israel after implying that it was responsible for a bomb attack in Tel Aviv on Sunday that killed a young woman and injured about 30 other people, even though the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades admitted the killing.
”You know who is behind these acts,” he said. ”Europe knows it, the Americans know it, the Israelis know it.” — Guardian Unlimited Â