Likud Rejects Sharon’s Plan to Leave Gaza

The Likud Party on Sunday soundly rejected Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s proposal to unilaterally withdraw from the Gaza Strip in a lopsided vote that took place after a pregnant settler and her four children died in a shooting attack by Palestinian gunmen.

Final tallies showed about 60% of Likud voters opposed the proposal, which calls for evacuating all 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip and four others in the northern West Bank.

The results of voting by Likud’s rank and file threw Sharon’s political future into question and dealt a setback to Bush administration efforts to cast its embrace of the plan as a way to revive the U.S.-backed “road map” to peace.

Sharon said he would not resign, but conceded that he had lost a referendum that he had allowed in order to build support for his plan.

“There are many who are as disappointed as I am with the results,” Sharon said in a written statement issued late Sunday. “The coming days will not be easy. I will consult with the Cabinet ministers over the coming days and will carefully examine the implications and the steps we’ll take.”

But, he added, “One thing is clear to me: The people of Israel did not elect me to sit with my hands folded in my lap for four years. I was elected to find the way to bring the calm, the security and the peace the people deserve.”

Before the voting, Sharon suggested that he would seek government approval for the plan even if Likud rejected it. Sharon originally said he would abide by the referendum of Likud’s nearly 200,000 members eligible to cast ballots in the vote, but later asserted that the internal poll was not legally binding.

Commentators said the loss, though crushing for Sharon, was unlikely to prompt him to give up.

“Sharon is a fighter,” said Shai Feldman, director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University. “He will try to see if there is a way to recuperate from this.”

Some analysts said he could still push the plan forward, perhaps through a nationwide referendum or by reshuffling the government to give him a certain Cabinet majority.

Polls have shown that most Israelis favor the plan.

Leaders of the Jewish settlement movement, which waged a fierce campaign against the proposal, sounded a note of relief.

Settler leader Bentsi Lieberman declared that “the sword of destruction has been lifted from the neck of part of Israel for a long time. There is no joy here, but this is a watershed event in Israeli politics.”

Nabil abu Rudaineh, spokesman for Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, said the result of the Likud vote “is not our concern. What we want to see is resumption of the negotiations based on the road map and an Israeli end to its attacks against the Palestinian people.”

The outcome could realign Israeli politics by turning the ruling Likud from a pragmatic governing party into one marked by a rigid, rightist ideology out of step with the public, said Yaron Ezrahi, a political scientist at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

“It’s a major political event in terms of the political realignment in Israel, the result of which is whether the politics of peace or the politics of occupation get the upper hand,” Ezrahi said. “This is the conflict.”

Sharon’s situation is complicated by his legal problems. Israel’s state prosecutor has recommended that the attorney general issue an indictment against the prime minister in a bribery case. A decision is expected in coming weeks.

Suspense over the vote outcome was punctuated by the midday ambush of the pregnant settler and her children, which took place on a road leading to the Gush Katif bloc and seemed to provide fodder for both sides of the debate over the pullout proposal.

Sharon and his allies have argued that withdrawing from the Gaza Strip would reduce friction with the Palestinians and relieve Israel’s military from having to defend the 7,500 settlers who live there among 1.2 million Palestinians.

Opponents argued that evacuation would amount to a reward for terrorism. They said the killings starkly made that point.

“The government of Israel sent [the settlers] there and now they want to give these nasty murderers the houses of those they killed just today,” said Shaul Nir, a 50-year-old engineer, as he left the main polling place in Jerusalem.

Analysts said the attack probably boosted voting by those sympathetic to the settlers.

A joint claim of responsibility for the shooting came from the militant wings of two Palestinian organizations, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committees, an umbrella group. They said the attack was retribution for Israel’s assassination of the last two leaders of Hamas, the militant group responsible for dozens of suicide bombings and other attacks on Israelis.

Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin was killed in an Israeli airstrike in March and his successor, Abdulaziz Rantisi, died in a similar missile strike less than a month later.

Both gunmen in Sunday’s attack were killed by Israeli soldiers.

Several hours after the shooting, an Israeli gunship fired missiles into a Gaza City building housing a radio station. The Israeli military said the station had aired interviews with senior Hamas leaders that incited attacks and had broadcast warnings about the movements of Israeli soldiers.

The defeat of Sharon’s plan came at the hands of an energetic opposition organized by the Gush Katif settlers and thousands of their right-wing supporters. They argued that a “no” vote did not amount to a rebuke of Sharon, long a patron of the settlement movement and still personally popular in Likud.

In contrast, Sharon’s camp appeared almost lethargic even as polling numbers in the final stretch indicated that he was running behind. Backers were hoping for a high turnout, but that did not materialize.

Supporters who voted said a unilateral pullout offered a possible break in the 44-month-old conflict with the Palestinians since other initiatives appeared to be going nowhere.

“We should give it a chance,” said Batia Day, a medical secretary who voted in Jerusalem. “We want to embark on a new road. We want peace.”

Among the losers was the Bush administration, which endorsed the withdrawal proposal while making a major shift in policy to recognize Israeli claims to retain parts of the West Bank that house the largest settlement blocs.

As part of the same agreement, the Americans also rejected the Palestinian claim of a right to return to ancestral homes in Israel that they fled or were expelled from in 1948 during Israel’s war of independence.

The Likud decision threw the U.S. assurances into doubt and left the Bush administration to ponder how to rescue its diplomatic initiatives.

The withdrawals were proposed as part of Sharon’s so-called disengagement plan, first laid out in rough outline during a speech in December.

He said then that if there were no hope for fruitful peace negotiations, Israel should act on its own by pulling back to more easily defended boundaries and dismantling isolated settlements that sit in areas with large Palestinian populations.

He said such actions would help preserve Israel’s Jewish character.

Sharon did not initially identify which areas he was considering leaving. But he later said Israel should abandon all of its Gaza Strip settlements since it was unlikely to end up with the coastal strip in any final peace agreement with the Palestinians.

Putting the matter to a vote of Likud’s membership was not Sharon’s idea, and it represented considerable risk. But it was also a chance to win needed momentum for his plan and thus prod reluctant Likud members in his Cabinet and Knesset into giving their approval.

At the time, many top Likud politicians were holding back their endorsements or were openly in opposition.

Less than three weeks ago, Sharon appeared to have the upper hand after gaining Bush’s endorsement for the plan during an April 14 visit to Washington, D.C.

Bush’s assurances helped Sharon win the backing of holdout Likud ministers, including Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom and Education Minister Limor Livnat.

But the momentum proved short-lived. Polls soon began showing narrowing Likud support for his plan, though overall public backing remained solid. With just a few days left in the campaign, polls for the first time showed more Likud voters opposed than in support, though without a majority.

Sharon’s advisors said that settlers and their allies opposed to evacuation had waged a glitzy, big-money campaign, while the prime minister argued his case without resorting to massive fund-raising and widespread advertising.

But Sharon warned Likud members that they could not support him and at the same time oppose his plan.