Sharon faces rebellion in own party over Gaza withdrawal plan

1.00pm - By DONALD MacINTYRE

JERUSALEM - Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, is fighting to contain a rebellion among his own party members which would seriously undermine his authority if it leads to defeat in next Sunday's Likud referendum on his plan to withdraw from Gaza.

Three key right-wing Likud members of his Cabinet who last week gave grudging support to the disengagement plan - including the finance minister and possible leadership rival Benjamin Netanyahu -have now made it clear that they do not intend to join the campaign to win over the votes of the 200,000 Likud members next weekend.

Leaked accounts of a tense and fractious meeting of the Cabinet on Sunday disclose that Mr Netanyahu, the foreign Minister Sylvan Shalom, and the Education minister Limor Livnat all told Mr Sharon that they would have to be content with the somewhat reluctant declarations of support they offered publicly earlier this month.

The fear among supporters of the campaign in favour of disengagement from settlements in Gaza and a handful of small ones in the Northern West Bank is that the three ministers are hedging their bets against possible defeat for the plan in the referendum.

The scale of the gamble Mr Sharon has embarked upon has been underlined by some polling figures suggesting that support for the plan could be slipping despite the substantial boost Mr Sharon secured in Washington last week, when President Bush effectively ruled out a right of return of Palestinian refugees to Israel and accepted that some Israeli settlement blocks in the West Bank would remain in Israeli hands after any final peace deal with the Palestinians.

Several commentators here have suggested that growing anxieties about the possible outcome of the referendum and the need to win round hard right opponents of the plan may have been one reason why Mr Sharon has again chosen to declare that he no longer feels bound by his promise to Mr Bush three years ago not to inflict physical harm on Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian Authority President.

The one hope that Mr Sharon has for his dissident ministers is that Mr Shalom, who is at least said to have suggested some ideas for the campaign to the Prime Minister, could possibly be persuaded to come round.

Mr Shalom faces the problem that if the referendum is won without his active support his own job will be at risk if the extreme right wing parties walk out of the coalition and the Labour Party steps in to form a unity government. In such circumstances Shimon Peres, the Labour leader, would be a near certainty to take over the Foreign Ministry.

Mounting tensions within the ruling party were underlined when the Knesset Speaker, Reuven Rivlin, insisted on using two speeches during the 48 hours of Memorial and Independence today to make clear his support for the cause of settlers in terms read as criticism of Mr Sharon's disengagement plan.

Memorial Day commemorates Israelis killed in the war of 1948 and subsequent conflicts while Independence Day, which lasts from last night until tonight, celebrates the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.

Mr Rivlin told a Memorial Day ceremony in the settlement block of Gush Etzion "we will go on living. We will stand strong against those who seek to harm us, those who seek to rout us and those, heaven forbid, who would have us retreat."

Meanwhile, anger was expressed even by Cabinet dissidents at an article posted on the website of the "Jewish Leadership" movement, an extremist faction within the Likud. The article contained what was read as an implicit call to "eliminate" the prime minister, who is referred to by the author as "a most dangerous enemy of the Jewish people".

The bitterly fought campaign on both sides has also spread to religious circles after pro-settler rabbis distributed a controversial prayer to synagogues across Israel. The prayer, supposed to be an annex to the Jewish prayer to "our Father who art in heaven", unashamedly backs the anti-disengagement causes. Some religious authorities refused to allow the prayer to be said on Saturday while others accepted it.

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