JERUSALEM, 31 March 2004 — Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon agreed yesterday to put his Gaza pullout plan to a vote by his Likud party as he faced a corruption probe that could oust him and mounting opposition from coalition partners.
Two far-right ministers in Sharon’s coalition Cabinet called on him to postpone a White House visit to win US support for “disengagement” from the Palestinians until a decision is made on whether he will face trial in a deepening bribery scandal.
Seeking to silence criticism of his Gaza plan from within his own rightist Likud, Sharon gave in to pressure to hold a referendum of the party’s 200,000 members once he returns from a mid-April visit to Washington, political sources said.
Though many in the Likud have long opposed ceding any land Israel seized in the 1967 Middle East War, opinion polls show party members increasingly willing to part with isolated, hard-to-defend Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip.
“Sharon knows most of the people of the Likud don’t want to be in Gaza and this will give him legitimacy to make the withdrawal,” a source close to the prime minister said.
Sharon said on Monday he would press ahead with his Gaza plan despite corruption scandals swirling around him. He said he would hold a Cabinet vote on the initiative, which calls for uprooting all or most Jewish settlements in Gaza and possibly several more in the West Bank, after he returns from the April 14 talks in Washington.
He warned his more hawkish partners he would form a new government if they tried to block the withdrawal. The prime minister laid out his strategy a day after Israel’s attorney general received a recommendation from the chief prosecutor to indict Sharon on charges of taking bribes from a businessman pursuing a real estate development scheme. A decision is expected within two months, judicial sources said.
Adding to pressure on Sharon, Israel’s Arab minority, angered by his tough handling of an uprising by their Palestinian brethren, used annual protests against land expropriation to call for the prime minister’s ouster.
Thousands of Israeli Arabs marched peacefully in the Jewish state to mark “Land Day”, while thousands of Palestinians held demonstrations, some marred by stone-throwing clashes with Israeli soldiers, in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Anger in the Palestinian territories was stoked by Israel’s assassination last week of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, leader of Hamas, the main resistance group behind a campaign of suicide bombings.
Three US envoys were expected in Israel on Thursday in the latest in a series of visits to sound out Sharon on details of his disengagement plan in preparation for his talks with US President George W. Bush.
Senior officials from the so-called Middle East peace quartet also held talks in Brussels yesterday clouded by the latest flare-up of tension, diplomats said.
