Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s Gaza pull-out plan was hanging in the balance on Wednesday as his right-wing Likud party was to vote on his ambitions to bring the opposition Labour party into a new broad-based coalition.
As Sharon prepared to deliver one of the most important speeches of his political life, his arch-enemy Yasser Arafat made a rare admission of failure in his own keynote address to MPs by admitting his Palestinian Authority has made ”unacceptable mistakes”.
While opponents of Sharon’s Gaza plan will submit a motion to the party’s 2 900-strong convention specifically ruling out Labour joining the government, the premier is expected to counter with his own motion to authorise him to negotiate with ”any Zionist party”.
He needs to bring Labour into government to pass his so-called disengagement plan through Parliament. He lost his majority in the 120-seat Knesset in June when traditional right-wing supporters baulked at what they regard as the ”forcible transfer of Jews” from the Gaza Strip.
Convention president Israel Katz, one of the leading opponents of the disengagement plan, said on Wednesday that party members were likely to first vote on Sharon’s motion and then on the one on Labour in government.
”Technically, one could vote for the two motions, which represent two totally opposite concepts,” Katz, Minister of Agriculture in the current government, told public radio.
Sharon has said that he will not be bound by the outcome of the vote but a rejection of his overall political strategy would be extremely damaging.
The premier insisted that a coalition with Labour is far from inevitable and hopes that his alternative resolution will convince sceptics to give him room to maneuver.
Sharon is due to address the convention at about 8.15 pm (5.15pm GMT) ahead of voting, which will be held in a secret ballot. Many commentators predict the secret ballot will encourage Sharon’s opponents to vote against the premier.
Arafat admits failure
Meanwhile, Arafat used his speech to accuse Israel of trying to sabotage his government and of wrecking the peace process with its continued settlement activity and its building of the West Bank separation barrier.
But in a rare acknowledgement of the failures of his regime, Arafat said: ”We shouldn’t blame only the occupation. Some unacceptable mistakes have been made by our institutions and some have abused their positions and violated the trust that has been placed in them.”
He added that he has also been guilty of errors.
”No one has been immune, starting from me downwards,” he said.
Mass demonstrations were held within both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank last month in protest at the rampant corruption in the Palestinian Authority, representing arguably the biggest challenge to his authority since his return from exile a decade earlier.
The protests also came amid a general collapse in security, which included an unprecedented spate of kidnappings and arson attacks on government offices.
Arafat admitted that ”no real efforts have been made to enforce law and order”.
”More efforts and support should be made for the security of the people and this is the responsibility of the security organisations,” he added.
Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei submitted his resignation last month after the kidnappings but later retracted it after lengthy mediation efforts involving other senior Palestinians.
With Qorei sitting alongside him, Arafat again said he will do everything in his power to help the premier tackle the security situation.
”I support my brother Abu Alaa [Qorei] and I give him my full support to implement this.”
World leaders, including United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and United States Secretary of State Colin Powell, have been pushing Arafat to loosen his grip over the security services, which allow him still to exercise the lion’s share of power.
Hunger strike grows
Meanwhile, hundreds more Palestinian prisoners are joining an open-ended hunger strike designed to put pressure on Israeli authorities to improve their conditions, prison officials said.
A total of 2 264 of the 3 800 prisoners who are being held in prison service-run detention centres are now refusing their meals, according to prison service spokesperson Ian Domnitz.
Most of the 8 000 Palestinian prisoners are held in centres run by the Israeli army but military officials had no figures for the numbers of the inmates refusing food.
On the ground, five Palestinians were killed and another five wounded when an Israeli helicopter gunship fired at least one missile at an open area in eastern Gaza City early on Wednesday.
Palestinian sources said that one of the victims was the son-in-law of the late Hamas leader Abdelaziz Rantissi, who was himself assassinated in an Israeli air strike earlier in the year.
Three people were also wounded, one seriously, when Palestinian missiles hit the Gush Katif settlement bloc in southern Gaza, medical sources said. — Sapa-AFP