JERUSALEM, 20 September 2005 — Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon flew home yesterday to a battle for his political survival after collecting diplomatic dividends at the United Nations for a pullout from the Gaza Strip. Sharon faces a showdown with hard-line rival Benjamin Netanyahu trying to unseat him as head of their rightist Likud party, a move that could bring down the government, force early elections and keep peacemaking with the Palestinians on hold.
In a show of confidence on the plane back, Sharon told reporters “I’m not concerned and neither should you be.” A week before a fateful meeting of Likud’s Central Committee, Sharon, 77, had complained in a speech to US Jewish leaders in New York that he had “lost the majority of my own party” and was in danger of being ousted.
He said “radical extremists” in the Likud opposed to quitting Gaza after 38 years of military occupation were trying to force a parliamentary election although the party did not have to submit to such a test until late 2006. Rightist critics of the first removal of Jewish settlements from land Palestinians want for a state have called the pullout, completed a week ago, a surrender to Palestinian violence and a betrayal of Jewish biblical claims on occupied territory.
“Ariel Sharon has seven days to save his government,” wrote commentator Nadav Eyal in the Maariv daily. A political crisis also was brewing for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Parliament was set next Monday to debate a no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei and his Cabinet, Abbas appointees, by lawmakers who hold them responsible for chaos in Gaza following the Israeli pullout.
For Sharon, the fight that looms at home stands in contrast to the warm embrace he received from leaders at the UN World Summit where he won accolades for a Gaza withdrawal seen as a possible catalyst for renewed peace moves.
Meanwhile, Abbas said that it will take an international agreement to reopen the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt in the wake of Israel’s historic pullout. “The agreement must be under Egyptian-Palestinian control but the details of entering and leaving must be subject to an international agreement,” Abbas told journalists during the inauguration of a new hospital in Gaza.
“The (Palestinian) Authority has managed to repair in three days what the occupation destroyed at the Rafah terminal, which is in the process of being equipped to re-open to citizens 24 hours a day so that Gaza does not become a giant prison,” he added. Israel withdrew all its soldiers from Rafah, as from the rest of Gaza, last week and the border terminal has been officially closed since Sept. 7.
While Israel agreed to the deployment of some 750 Egyptian border guards to Rafah, it still wants to carry out inspections of civilians and merchandise entering Gaza for fear that arms could be smuggled into the territory. Israel has said the Rafah crossing will be closed for six months, during which civilians and traders wanting to cross in and out of Gaza will have to go via a kibbutz which straddles the Palestinian territory, Egypt and Israel.
