Sharon's plan faces rejection

2004-05-02 11:49

Jerusalem - Members of Ariel Sharon's Likud party began voting on Sunday on the prime minister's plan for a unilateral Israeli pullout from the Gaza Strip, with opinion polls predicting his scheme will be rejected.

Polling stations opened at 08:00 (05:00 GMT) and were due to close at 22:00 (19:00 GMT) for the right-wing party's 193 190 members to cast their votes.

The official results of the referendum were expected late on Sunday, while Israeli media said that estimates would be released shortly after the stations shut down.

Latest opinion polls were in line with those published last week, showing a steady majority in Likud opposed to the plan to evacuate 21 Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and four others in the West Bank.

In the mass-circulation daily Yediot Aharonot, 47 of respondents said they were against the plan and 44% in favour. A Maariv poll found 49% would vote down the plan and 41% support it.

In contrast, the Israeli public itself supports Sharon's plan under which most settlement blocs built in West Bank territory captured in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war would remain under the Jewish state's control.

While Sharon managed to convince his close ally the United States he had no choice but to undertake unilateral steps to advance peace in the absence of a Palestinian peace partner, some in Likud see the evacuation as a betrayal.

Likud has long championed "Eretz Israel" - seen as the biblical borders of the Land of Israel including both Gaza and the West Bank. And Sharon himself was an architect of settlement expansion in the Palestinian territories.

In an impassioned plea published in Maariv, he wrote: "The best way to ensure Israel's future is the plan I initiated - the disengagement plan.

"True, the Jewish settlers of the Gaza Strip will pay a heavy personal price. That hurts me very much."

But, added the premier, "It is obvious to everyone that from a security, economic and demographic standpoint, we cannot remain in the Gaza Strip with the 1.2 million Palestinians there.

"Even those who oppose my plan acknowledge that."

Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz told public radio that the separation plan was "an historic opportunity to define our borders".

He stressed that unlike those in the West Bank, settlements in the Gaza Strip were "not in line with Israel's national interest".

But the influential Orthodox Sephardic rabbi and spiritual chief of the Shas party, Ovadia Yosef, told his followers on Saturday night he saw "a great danger" in the plan.

"All those who hear my voice, we must know this is the opinion of the Torah (holy book). They have to vote against" the plan, said the rabbi whose influence extends to Likud's religious voters.

- AFP