TEL AVIV, 4 March 2005 — Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s right-wing Likud party voted yesterday in favor of a referendum on the government’s plan to evacuate the Gaza Strip, flouting the advice of its leader.
The vote on the resolution — which is non-binding for Sharon — was passed by a majority show of hands by members of the party’s central committee who were present at an extraordinary meeting in Tel Aviv.
The committee called on Likud MPs to demand a parliamentary vote on a bill calling for a national plebiscite on the plan.
Moments before the members voted for a referendum, Sharon said his planned pullout from Gaza would go ahead regardless of domestic opposition. “Government and parliament have made difficult decisions. They will happen,” he told a Likud central committee meeting in Tel Aviv.
Sharon has flatly refused to hold a national plebiscite on the withdrawal and had urged central committee members not to back the resolution, which is non-binding on the Israeli premier. “I have never bowed to threats and I won’t do so today,” said Sharon.
Once seen as the ultimate champion of the Israeli settlers in occupied Palestinian land, Sharon vowed that settlement activity would continue in the West Bank and Jerusalem despite his intentions in the Gaza Strip.
“Thanks to settlement, we will forever keep our big positions, essential to our existence,” he said, listing them as “our capital Jerusalem”, “settlement blocs in the most sacred places of our history” and “the main security zones for our defense.”
The Likud resolution calls on Likud MPs to demand a parliamentary vote on a bill calling for a national plebiscite on the plan.
Meanwhile, Palestinian militants blew up a vehicle booby-trapped with explosives not far from a place where more than 200 Jewish settlers were praying yesterday, witnesses and military sources said. No one was wounded in the attack.
Militants detonated the vehicle as a jeep drove past carrying Israeli soldiers tasked with protecting more than 200 Jewish worshippers, less than two kilometers away, said witnesses. Soldiers and Palestinians briefly exchanged fire but no one was wounded.
Four vehicles were gutted by the force of the explosion, which punched a crater in the ground and shattered windows in a nearby building, said witnesses.
In another development, the Palestinian Authority is poised to resume executions of prisoners on death row for the first time since August 2002, with 15 due to be carried out by the end of the month, officials said yesterday.
