JERUSALEM, 2 May 2004 — By making today’s Likud party referendum on his proposed unilateral Gaza pullout a vote of confidence, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is taking a risk that could cost him his job and is worrying his US ally.
“Those who will vote against my plan will vote against me, and those who will vote for my plan, will vote for me,” Sharon told a television interview Friday evening.
Should his fellow Likud members reject the proposal to evacuate 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip and four on the West Bank, Sharon said “it would be very difficult to lead the country.” He said a defeat could lead to early elections and that “terror would increase.” He said that would constitute “the greatest victory for (Palestinian President) Yasser Arafat and for Hamas,” the Gaza-based radical Islamic movement. When asked if he would resign should a “no” vote prevail, Sharon skirted the question saying: “The issue at stake is whether the Likud will continue to lead the country.”
The hawkish premier has repeatedly stressed the vote is nonbinding, and one of his advisers told AFP: “One thing I can assure you — even if he loses, the prime minister is determined to go ahead with his plan.
“If you have to change the political constellation to get his plan through, then that’s what he’ll try to do,” he said, adding that his boss could even try to rearrange his ruling coalition and “go for another government.”
That would almost certainly mean Sharon would drop his longtime allies in the nationalist right and try to bring in the left-wing Labor party.
Pitching Sharon’s plan to the 193,000 Likud members, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said yesterday it would “reinforce (the) Jewish presence” in northern Israel, the southern desert and the West Bank. “We must reinforce settlement blocs in the West Bank, as they offer us strategic depth and defensible borders for the future,” he said.
Should Likud approve the plan, its implementation will “start at the end of next year (2005) to allow for a dialogue with the settlers that will have to relocate,” he added.
Four newspaper polls published Friday predicted Likud will reject the plan by a margin of between one and seven percentage points, although they also show large numbers still undecided. In contrast, the Israeli public supports the evacuation plan.
Still, defeat would not only humiliate the extreme right-wing former general, it would also sink the peace process even deeper in the mire, since the US is looking to the plan to kick-start the peace process left moribund by the cycle of violence.
“I’ll admit to a slight sense of panic,” said one US official who deals with Middle East policy. “We’re not really sure what we’ll do if it goes down, but it will complicate things. Just how and how much, though, we don’t know. We’ll have to see.”
Sharon has convinced his US ally that he had to opt for unilateral peace steps since Palestinians have been unable to implement the roadmap — a US-backed blueprint calling for renewed negotiations and the creation of Palestinian state in 2005.
But in the West Bank town of Ramallah, Arafat accused Sharon of killing the road map plan. “We are determined to reach a long-lasting and comprehensive peace with Israel on the basis of international resolutions and the road map,” he told some 1,500 people in a Labor Day speech.
Meanwhile, two Palestinian teenagers were seriously wounded during clashes between Israeli troops and stone-throwing youths in the northern West Bank and in the Gaza Strip yesterday, Palestinian security sources and medics said.
In Tubas, 17 kilometers south of Jenin, troops opened fire at a crowd of young men pelting them with stones and 18-year-old Zakaria Daraghmeh was hit in the head, they said. Israeli military sources confirmed that “forces came to Tubas in order to conduct a search and came across Palestinians that attacked them with stones.” And at the Erez crossing point between the northern Gaza Strip and Israel, a 15-year-old Palestinian was hit in the head by Israeli fire as young men were hurling stones at troops, medics said.
