Fraud investigation clouds Sharon's risky Gaza plan

Ariel Sharon's premiership is rapidly turning into a drama-a-day soap opera.

Less than a week after the Prime Minister put his coalition at risk by announcing a plan to evacuate settlements from the Gaza Strip, Israelis are asking whether the justice system will let him stay in office to carry it out.

Fraud squad detectives questioned Sharon under caution for 2 1/2 hours in his Jerusalem residence this week over suspicions that he accepted bribes from a property developer.

The Attorney-General, Menachem Mafuz, is expected to decide by early April whether to indict him.

The developer, David Appel, has already been charged with trying to buy Sharon's favours by hiring his younger son, Gilad, to advise him on a Greek island property deal. Gilad was to have been paid millions of shekels, although his qualifications have been challenged.

Sources close to the inquiry said the Prime Minister told investigators he was unaware of Gilad's deals. "Sharon told the police he was not aware of Gilad's employment as an adviser to Appel."

After several failed prosecutions of other political figures, government lawyers are unlikely to indict the Prime Minister unless they feel confident they have a cast-iron case.

They would have to prove that Sharon knew he was being bribed and not just being helped by an old friend, "casting his bread upon the waters", a subtle distinction endorsed in the past by the Supreme Court.

Right-wing critics, including one of his own deputy ministers, Zvi Hendel, have accused Sharon of launching his Gaza plan to distract attention from the investigation. Others agree the two issues are not entirely unconnected.

Ben Caspit commented in the Ma'ariv newspaper that the Prime Minister was "trying to evacuate his investigations from the top of the media and public agenda". But he questioned whether Sharon was purely "evacuating Jews from their homes in order to stay in power".

The voters seem to agree. The latest poll gave him the benefit of the doubt by 57 per cent to 24.

Rebel right-wingers are stridently plotting to bring down the Government. Settler rabbis declared a day of fasting "to annul the evil decree and save the people of Israel".

The ultra-nationalist Kach movement announced that it was printing stickers branding Sharon a traitor - a chilling echo of a campaign it mounted before the 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.

The impression is growing that Sharon means business. But Israeli and Palestinian sceptics detect a Machiavellian motive.

"I think he is serious," said David Kimche, a former Foreign Ministry director-general. "But one has to see it within the wider framework. He is willing to sacrifice the Gaza Strip in order to preserve as much of the West Bank as possible in Israeli hands."

Jibril Rajoub, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's security adviser, said: "I hope Sharon is not playing a dirty game. The question is whether such an initiative is the end of the process, or if it's the beginning of ending the occupation and the settlements, even in the West Bank."

- INDEPENDENT