JERUSALEM – Israel’s parliament yesterday approved a plan to post Egyptian troops on the Gaza border, setting the stage for an Israeli military pullout from the sensitive coastal frontier it has held for 38 years.

But the stormy debate over giving up control to a former enemy and the possibility of Palestinian Arab arms smuggling added fuel to the rivalry between Prime Minister Sharon and hard-liner Benjamin Netanyahu.

The 53-28 parliamentary vote came as Mr. Netanyahu, who quit the Cabinet just three weeks ago, opened a campaign to unseat Mr. Sharon as the leader of the ruling Likud Party.

The split in Israel’s largest party has called into question whether Mr. Sharon’s government can live out its term until November 2006 and move ahead on peacemaking with the Palestinian Arabs after the Gaza pullout.

Opening his campaign, Mr. Netanyahu visited one of the most contentious areas in a trilateral dispute involving Israel, the Palestinian Arabs, and America – the three-mile corridor between Jerusalem and Maaleh Adumim, Israel’s largest West Bank settlement.

Mr. Netanyahu criticized Mr. Sharon for freezing a government plan to construct 3,650 homes in the area to block a Palestinian Arab hold there and on nearby east Jerusalem.

During the parliamentary debate on the agreement with Egypt, Mr. Netanyahu displayed his basic distrust of both the Palestinian Arabs and the Egyptians, insisting on Israeli control of the Egypt-Gaza border, as well as the Gaza seacoast and air space.

But Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, dismissed fears about turning the task over to Egypt. The parliamentary action was little more than a technicality, changing the 1979 Israel-Egypt peace treaty to allow for posting 750 lightly armed Egyptian border police.