Sharon's party rejects his Gaza plan, exit polls say

8.00am - By MATT SPETALNICK

JERUSALEM - Israeli leader Ariel Sharon's party overwhelmingly rejected his Gaza pullout plan Sunday, exit polls showed, handing him an embarrassing defeat.

The vote was taken on the same day Palestinian gunmen killed a Jewish settler and her four daughters in the territory.

Television polls projected the prime minister losing the vote in his rightist Likud party roughly 60 to 40 per cent despite United States President Bush's endorsement of his strategy of "disengagement" from the Palestinians.

The outcome of the referendum within the traditionally pro-settler Likud, if confirmed by the official ballot count, could jeopardise Sharon's plan and trigger a political crisis.

The Palestinian Authority rejected the vote, saying the Likud had no right to decide the fate of Palestinians.

"It's a frustrating day for us to see these Likud members taking themselves seriously to determine our fate. They have no right to overrule signed agreements," Palestinian cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat told Reuters.

Palestinians would welcome an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, but believe Sharon's plan would still leave the fenced-in territory cut off while the Jewish state strengthened its hold on the West Bank.

Palestinians were furious at US President George W Bush for offering unprecedented concessions to Sharon in support of the "disengagement plan".

Bush said Israel could expect to keep some big West Bank settlement blocs under any future peace deal and ruled out the right of Palestinian refugees to return to former homes in what is now Israel.

Polls in the final run-up to the vote had predicted it would go against Sharon, and Sunday's ambush of a car carrying a pregnant Jewish settler woman and her children in the Gaza Strip may have hardened "no" sentiment even further.

The attack, which drew a retaliatory Israeli air strike in Gaza City, was also likely to reinforce the opinion of most Israelis that it is not worth the price of keeping 7500 settlers in hard-to-defend enclaves among 1.3 million Palestinians in the seaside strip.

The Likud referendum was not binding and Sharon had vowed that even if he lost among the party's 193,000 voters he would ultimately present the plan to parliament where he would have a greater chance of winning approval.

But Sharon is all but certain to be weakened politically after failing to quell a rebellion by party members unwilling to give up an inch of land captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

Sharon had warned Likud members they could bring down his government and force new elections if they rejected his proposal to uproot all settlements in Gaza and four of 120 enclaves in the West Bank -- a move he said would improve Israel's security.

But Sharon, who had expected to cruise to victory on Bush's unprecedented guarantees, was caught off-guard by the intensity of the grass-roots "no" campaign waged by settlers branding withdrawal a "reward to terror".

Minutes before polling stations closed, four Palestinian militants were killed in an explosion in a car in the West Bank city of Nablus, medics and Palestinian officals said.

They said the four were senior members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed group in Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction. The Israeli army declined immediate comment.

"The four were assassinated by a missile strike from the air," said Mahmoud al-Alul, the governor of Nablus. He added that he held Prime Minister Ariel Sharon responsible "for this escalation".

The strike took place hours after Palestinian militants shot dead a Jewish settler and her four children in the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian witnesses said the missiles were fired either from a helicopter or a warplane. The blast ripped through the vehicle, flinging parts of the three passengers across a wide area, medics said.

Israeli helicopter gunships earlier fired missiles at a building housing a radio station for the militant Islamic group Hamas in the Gaza Strip. At least two people were hurt in the strike.

The Jewish settler family -- a woman of 34 who was eight months pregnant and daughters aged 11, 9, 7 and 2 -- was ambushed on the corridor road between Israel and Gush Katif, one of the main settlement blocs slated for evacuation under the Sharon plan.

Tali Hatuel had just set off to campaign against Sharon's initiative. "From here, we will not move," read a bumper sticker on her car, bloodied and pocked after the hail of bullets.

Israeli troops shot dead the two gunmen shortly afterward.

Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committees said they carried out Sunday's attack to avenge the assassination of the Hamas leader and his successor in Israeli missile strikes.

"We tell Sharon that Israelis should flee Gaza and not leave as if it was a victory for them," they said in a statement.

Hours later, helicopter gunships fired missiles at a 12-storey Gaza building housing a radio station of the main militant faction Hamas, wounding two people, witnesses said.

Sharon condemned the attack as "terrible murder" and said it was an attempt to disrupt his plan, which Palestinians fear could dash their dream of a viable state in the near future.

Sharon's unilateral approach to the Palestinians also calls for holding on to larger West Bank settlement blocs containing the majority of Jews on territory Israel occupied in 1967.

Palestinians welcome the prospect of Israeli settlers and soldiers leaving Gaza, but they have condemned Sharon's intention of maintaining control of the strip's borders, air space, coastal waters and frontier with Egypt.

Nationwide Israeli polls favour Sharon's initiative, showing a majority convinced Gaza is a liability they should get rid of.

But some of Sharon's critics suggest the prime minister, once considered the godfather of settlement building, proposed the plan in part to deflect attention from corruption scandals swirling around him. He has denied any wrongdoing.

- REUTERS