JERUSALEM, 3 June 2004 — Armed with fresh White House endorsement for his Gaza pullout plan, Israeli leader Ariel Sharon vowed yesterday to push it past rebellious ministers and evacuate all settlements in the territory by 2005.

In fresh violence in Gaza yesterday, Israeli troops shot dead two Palestinians armed with rifles and rocket-propelled grenades approaching a border checkpoint.

And the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees accused Israeli forces of violating the sanctity of its schools yesterday after two boys were wounded by gunfire in a classroom in the Gaza Strip.

Sharon is battling a political crisis that threatens to bring down his government. He needs to win Cabinet approval on Sunday for an initiative, supported by most Israelis, to give up the territory captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

He is facing off against rebels led by influential rival and Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who oppose a plan rejected by members of the ruling Likud party as a victory for “Palestinian terror”.

“The plan will pass on Sunday,” Sharon told reporters after a parliamentary security committee session. He told the meeting the 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip and four out of about 120 in the West Bank would be evacuated by the end of next year.

One lawmaker quoted Sharon as saying “not a single Jewish settler will be left in Gaza”. The former general, nicknamed “The Bulldozer” for his hard-nosed tactics, failed to muster enough votes last Sunday and the vote was postponed.

Strengthening Sharon’s hand, the United States said President George W. Bush would only back the full Gaza pullout proposed by Sharon and not a watered-down version suggested by some ministers as a possible compromise.

“It is that plan that he (Bush) supports now and no other,” an embassy spokesman said in Tel Aviv, reinforcing Sharon’s warning that unprecedented US assurances on keeping West Bank land, which drew international condemnation, could be at stake.

Sharon said he was seeking, as part of his “disengagement” strategy, Jordanian security cooperation in the West Bank along the lines of what Egypt has proposed in Gaza after any pullout.

While Palestinians would welcome withdrawal from any of the land they seek for a state, they suspect Sharon’s plan is just a ruse to strengthen Israel’s hold on chunks of the West Bank where the bulk of Jewish settlements have been built.

Sharon told lawmakers Israel had no plans to grant freedom of movement to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, confined to his West Bank headquarters for more than two years. Israeli media had reported an Egyptian proposal under which Arafat would relinquish some powers and be allowed to leave.

Insiders said despite Sharon’s apparent confidence yesterday, there was no guarantee that he had won over enough cabinet members to assure victory on Sunday.

If he thinks he will not get a majority, Sharon has the option of sacking ministers opposed to the plan or adding ministers who favor it.

Whichever way the Cabinet decides, it could trigger the collapse of the government, since far-right coalition allies have threatened to walk out if the plan is passed.

Meanwhile, Israeli troops shot and killed two Palestinian gunmen as they approached a checkpoint on the boundary between Israel and the Gaza Strip yesterday.

Palestinian security sources said they had been informed by the Israeli army that two Palestinians were killed near the Karni checkpoint. Hamas said the men, from the Jabalya refugee camp, were on their way to carry out an attack on an Israeli convoy.

The Israeli army also launched a fresh pre-dawn incursion into the Rafah refugee camp, demolishing three homes just over a week after Israel killed 42 Palestinians in the bloodiest Israeli raid in Gaza in years.

The army said it found a tunnel in Rafah used to smuggle arms across the border from Egypt, one of 15 it says it discovered this year.

The United Nations said two Palestinian boys were wounded by the Israeli army on Tuesday, one seriously, after a tank fired its machine-gun at a UN elementary school in Rafah’s Tel Sultan area.

“This is the second time in a little over a year that a child in a UN classroom has been struck by Israeli fire,” said Peter Hansen, head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).

“Such indifference to the sanctity of schools and the UN flags flying above them violates all humanitarian norms and is absolutely deplorable,” he said in a statement, adding that several shots had hit the school building.

The army said it was checking the report.

Three Israeli border policemen were formally charged here Wednesday for assaulting and humiliating two arrested Palestinian teenagers, as nine others were arrested, judicial sources said.

The three had first appeared in court on Tuesday when magistrates ordered that they remain in custody.

They are accused of beating the two 17-year-old youths and forcing them to lick their rifles and eat dirt.

Police sources said yesterday another nine border policemen had been arrested on suspicion of robbing or beating Palestinians.