Sharon Wins Crucial Vote On Gaza Plan
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

JERUSALEM, Israel – Prime Minister Sharon easily won a crucial party vote to reinforce his shaky government to carry out his Gaza pullout plan, party officials announced yesterday.
Mr. Sharon’s proposed inviting the dovish Labor Party and Orthodox Jewish to join his government, ensuring a solid majority for his Gaza withdrawal plan in the face of internal opposition from his Likud Party.
Cabinet minister Israel Katz announced that the final count of the vote in the Likud Central Committee was 62% in favor of Mr. Sharon’s proposal and 38% against.
A loss in the Central Committee could have forced new elections and jeopardized the Gaza withdrawal – a centerpiece of efforts to restart peace talks with the Palestinian Arabs in the wake of Yasser Arafat’s death.
The win clears the way to adding Labor, a partner solidly in favor of the Gaza pullout and resumption of peace negotiations.
There was some opposition among Labor activists to joining their archrival Mr. Sharon in another government, after their first joint government broke up in 2002. However, party leader Shimon Peres strongly favored entering the government.
The Likud committee voted in August against inviting Labor to join the government. But after Mr. Sharon fired a key coalition partner for voting against his budget on December 1, his coalition was more tenuous than ever. He had warned that the choice now was Labor or elections.
A lengthy electoral campaign would have delayed if not completely thwarted his plan to withdraw from Gaza and four West Bank settlements next year.
Worried about a low turnout that would favor his opponents, Mr. Sharon made a rare early morning appeal to his backers.
“I want to say that we are standing before great opportunities and events that could be historical, and I won’t let anything or anyone harm the opportunity of the state of Israel to take advantage of these opportunities,” he told Army Radio.
Mr. Sharon defied his party and his own ideology when he presented his plan to remove all 21 Jewish settlements from Gaza and four small ones from the West Bank.
For decades, Mr. Sharon was the patron of the settlements, enabling their construction and expansion, and his Likud hotly opposed conceding any land to the Palestinian Arabs or creation a Palestinian state.
Over the past year, however, Mr. Sharon has changed his policy, but most of his party refuses to go along.
Mr. Sharon says the Gaza settlements, with 8,200 Jews living among more than a million Palestinians, are untenable and must be removed. He argues the withdrawal would give Israel a better chance to retain its main settlement blocs in the West Bank, where most of the 236,000 settlers there live, and head off international peace efforts unfavorable to Israel.