Sharon overcomes key hurdle to Gaza pullout
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-03-24 09:07

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon won a key vote on Wednesday over a state budget he must push through parliament by the end of the month or face a snap election that would threaten his plan to pull out of Gaza.

Parliament's finance committee voted 10-9 in favor of the 2005 budget, sending the package to the full legislature where Sharon faces a tough battle for final approval next week against ultranationalists opposed to ceding an inch of occupied land.

In another sign of rightist opposition, a second Knesset panel decided to let parliament rule on whether to hold a referendum on a Gaza pullout. Sharon rejects the idea as a delaying tactic, and lawmakers are expected to vote it down.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon shakes hands with a Parliament member during a session of the Israeli Parliament in Jerusalem March 23, 2005. Sharon won a key vote over a state budget he must push through parliament by the end of the month or face a snap election that would threaten his plan to pull out of Gaza. [Reuters]

Under law, if the 264.5 billion shekel ($62 billion) budget is not passed by March 31, a general election must be held in late June, a month before the Gaza withdrawal is due to begin.

An early national ballot could put Sharon's "Disengagement Plan" on hold -- or possibly lead to it being shelved altogether -- while complicating any new peace moves with the Palestinians.

Committee approval of the budget followed fierce infighting in Sharon's right-wing Likud party, which is split over his plan to evacuate all 21 Jewish settlements in Gaza and four of 120 in the West Bank. Both territories were captured in the 1967 war.

An Israeli soldier pinches the cheek of a boy dressed in a soldier's costume in the Jewish settlement of Netzarim in the Gaza Strip, during the celebrations of Purim Wednesday March 23, 2005. Opponents of Israel's planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip lost a major weapon in their arsenal Wednesday after a key religious figure stood firm by his refusal to support a referendum on the pullout.[AP]

The vote marked the crossing of another major hurdle for Sharon, once considered the godfather of the settlers' cause but now reviled by them as a traitor.

But with rebellious Likud lawmakers vowing to vote against the budget, he is not guaranteed a majority when it comes before parliament next Tuesday.

As Sharon scrambles for legislative support from opposition parties, he is counting on broad public backing for his Gaza plan as well as Israeli distaste for the idea of holding a third national election in four years.

"I don't foresee elections because this budget will pass," Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Israel Radio.

LIKUD COMPROMISE

Likud rebels on the finance committee had vowed to block the budget and it appeared Sharon would have had no choice but to boot them off the panel. But that could have torn Likud apart.

Under an uneasy compromise, Likud rebels agreed to back the budget in the finance committee in return for support from pro-Sharon Likud legislators in the law committee for a proposal to hold a referendum on the Gaza plan.

Sharon has repeatedly dismissed the referendum proposal as a ploy by pullout opponents to obstruct the process.

The Knesset's law committee approved the referendum bill 9-8 on Wednesday, sending it to parliament for debate on Monday.

But analysts said it had almost no chance of passing the legislature, which has already endorsed Sharon's Gaza blueprint.

Sharon's coalition holds 67 of 120 seats in the Knesset but his margin has been jeopardized by the threat of about a dozen Likud deputies to reject the budget in protest at the Gaza plan.

A Gaza pullout would mark Israel's first removal of settlements from land the Palestinians want for their own state.

Still, many Palestinians remain wary, seeing it as an attempt to trade impoverished Gaza where 8,500 settlers live in fortified enclaves for large swathes of the West Bank where the vast majority of Israel's 240,000 settlers live.

That skepticism has been tempered by growing peace hopes on both sides since President Mahmoud Abbas was elected in January to succeed the late Yasser Arafat and violence has dropped off.

Signaling optimism further afield, Arab rulers on Wednesday relaunched a 2002 peace initiative which offers Israel normal relations in exchange for its withdrawal to the 1967 borders -- a precondition which Israel has repeatedly rejected.

"If the Arab League were to call on Arab states to conduct a dialogue with Israel, that would indeed be a positive step, but unfortunately this did not happen," said Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev in response to the resolution.

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