GAZA CITY, 23 November 2005 — Ariel Sharon will be re-elected as Israeli premier, vindicating his gamble to create a new liberal party in a move that has raised hopes of a breakthrough in the peace process, according to several polls.

Sharon’s former colleagues vied for the leadership of the right-wing Likud party, flung into crisis by the shift in Israeli politics.

A series of surveys taken after Sharon unveiled his new party showed that the Likud faction he created more than 30 years ago faces electoral meltdown.

The new Sharon-led Kadima (Forward) party would win between 30 and 33 seats in the 120-strong Parliament, the polls showed, and Likud between 12 and 15 seats — a dramatic drop from its current 40 in the Knesset.

The surveys also predicted that the left-of-center Labour would secure 26 seats.

Such a result would mark something of a recovery for the party, which earlier this month elected trade union chief Amir Peretz as leader and secured only 18 seats at the last election in 2003. “All the parties that I have consulted are in favor of early elections which should now take place,” President Moshe Katsav told journalists, adding that he hoped to set a date in the next few days after contacts with Knesset leaders.

Sharon had requested on Monday that the Parliament be dissolved, but a final decision remains in the hands of Katsav and the house.

Sharon’s divorce from Likud was on the cards for months, with many members refusing to forgive him for presiding over September’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, Israel’s first pullout from occupied Palestinian territory.

The prime minister has warned that further pullouts cannot be explicitly ruled out as part of a final status agreement which he plans to reach with the Palestinians under the terms of the road map peace plan. “Disengagement (from Gaza) gave us a historic opportunity, and I do not intend to allow anyone to squander it,” he announced late Monday.

His archrival and former Premier Benjamin Netanyahu, favorite to be elected new Likud leader, likened Sharon to a dictator and said he was bound to carry out more withdrawals as he would have to form a coalition with Peretz.

Wishing Sharon luck, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said he was interested in working with him to “advance peace in the region.” The Israeli press said the political revolution triggered by Sharon would have far-reaching implications for the Middle East conflict.

For the liberal Haaretz newspaper, Sharon’s departure from Likud represented a growing realization on the Israeli right “that there was no future in (Jewish) settlements” and “the occupation must come to an end.”

Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei expressed the hope that a new government would emerge capable of securing the ever elusive peace.

“The only thing that matters to us is to have a government in Israel interested in the peace process and capable of signing a settlement with us,” he said. A senior US official said that the Israeli vote and a Palestinian legislative election could lead to movement on the road map peace blueprint.

“In the medium run, our hope is that it is possible to make more progress on the road map ... and we hope that the winners that emerge will want to do that,” the official said on condition of anonymity while on a visit to Paris. In the Likud, three senior members have publicly thrown their hat into the ring for the leadership — Netanyahu, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom.

Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan yesterday deplored “in the strongest terms” the heavy fighting across the Lebanese-Israeli border and urged both sides to exercise the utmost restraint.

Four fighters with the Lebanese militia Hezbollah were killed and 11 Israelis wounded in the clashes which flared on Monday and continued yesterday with Israeli air raids into Lebanon. “The secretary-general deplores in the strongest terms the exchange of fire across the Blue Line,” Annan’s spokesman Stephane Dujarric told a press briefing, referring to the UN-demarcated border drawn after Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000.

— With input from agencies