Ariel Sharon beat off resistance to his Gaza pull-out plan on Thursday to win the backing of his ruling Likud party to invite the Labour opposition into the government.
The prime minister’s victory appears to assure his plans to close Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and part of the West Bank next year. But the ultimate price of Labour joining the government and keeping the ”disengagement plan” alive may be that it results in surrendering more territory than Sharon has in mind.
Likud’s 3 000 central committee members voted by nearly two-to-one in favour of a coalition with Labour just four months after it forbade Sharon from bringing the party into his administration. Had he lost the vote, the prime minister would probably have been forced to call an election.
Sharon says he expects to form a new government in about 10 days after talks with Labour and two small religious parties. The Labour leader, Shimon Peres, has said he wants to join the administration to ensure the survival of Sharon’s plan to remove 8 000 Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip and dismantle most of the military bases there. The government also plans to close four small settlements in the north of the West Bank.
Likud opponents of Gaza withdrawal are against a coalition with Labour because they fear it will shift the administration to the left and ultimately force a much larger pull-out from West Bank settlements.
As the vote began on Thursday, the prime minister attacked his opponents in Likud.
”Either Israel will move forward or it will fall backward,” he told Israel radio. ”The time has come to stop this incessant harassment and to allow the government to work. It’s clear that there is an attempt to prevent the government from carrying out its plans, its fight against terror … to prevent the withdrawal from Gaza.”
The vote came after Sharon ejected his main coalition partner, the Shinui party, out of the government, forcing the Likud leadership to open the door to Labour.
The result of Thursday’s ballot would appear to put an end to any further serious political challenges to the disengagement plan.
Coalition talks could start as early as Friday, though Labour still has its own internal rifts to overcome in finding accommodation with its old adversary Likud. ”I am struggling to achieve a national unity government — nothing else,” said Peres on Thursday night.
Sharon needs to bring at least one other smaller party into government to command a majority in Parliament. It is likely to be either Shas or United Torah Judaism, both religious parties unhappy with the Gaza withdrawal but more concerned with issues such as funding of religious schools.
The prime minister has again outmanoeuvred his opponents, most notably the finance minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, who in October threatened to resign over the Gaza pull-out and then backed down. Netanyahu also opposed Labour joining the government, but earlier this week changed his position by saying he would support it provided his austere economic programme remained largely intact. He also said Labour would have to accept Likud’s policy that, in any negotiations with the Palestinians, Israel would insist on retaining Jewish settlements and refuse to give up East Jerusalem.
But the expectation of many in Labour is that the Gaza pull-out will set in motion a process that will give momentum to the peace process and force future Israeli governments to make larger concessions than Sharon has in mind.
The Israeli prime minister’s right-wing critics have accused him of ”rewarding terrorists” with the Gaza plan, but there was no let-up in the army’s pursuit of Palestinian fighters on Thursday with a failed attempt to assassinate the co-leader of the Popular Resistance Committees, Jamal Abu Samhadana, near Rafah.
An Israeli missile hit the car in which he and two others were travelling, but all escaped with injuries. A passer-by was also wounded.
The PRC vowed ”painful and earthquake-like” attacks against Israel in revenge.
”Assassination attempts, even if they succeed, won’t weaken the resistance, but only strengthen it,” Samhadana said. ”We will continue fighting until we liberate all Palestinian land.”
Thursday’s assassination attempt was the first against a high-level Palestinian fighter since Yasser Arafat’s death a month ago.
The new Palestinian leadership has appealed to Israel to hold off on targeted killings and raids on Palestinian towns as it attempts to draw groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad into a ceasefire. – Guardian Unlimited Â