Netanyahu steps up bid to oust Sharon

ISRAEL'S prime minister, Ariel Sharon, and his Likud party rival, Benjamin Netanyahu, are running neck and neck ahead of a vote that could reshape the country's politics.

The 3,000-member Likud central committee is to vote on Monday on a motion by the hawkish Mr Netanyahu to bring forward a leadership contest from April to November. The vote is crucial to his attempts to oust Mr Sharon, an extraordinary bid to replace a popular prime minister.

Mr Netanyahu has been stoking fears of Palestinian terrorism as a consequence of the withdrawal from Gaza, completed last week. He wants the leadership contest, or primary, held early in order to capitalise on anger among hard-liners within the right-wing party towards Mr Sharon over the withdrawal.

A poll published in the newspaper Haaretz yesterday showed that 45.5 per cent of central committee members support bringing forward the primary, compared with 40.3 per cent against and 11.5 per cent undecided.

Mr Sharon has flatly rejected calls that he issue public assurances that he will not leave Likud. A victory for Mr Netanyahu in the vote, even with only a small majority, would prompt Mr Sharon to form a new centrist party, analysts believe.

"Sharon already has a skeletal centrist party, he's already spoken to people about this," says Leslie Susser, a political analyst at the Jerusalem Report magazine. "It is reasonably far advanced and he can move quickly with it, if he needs to."

Despite his Likud woes, Mr Sharon remains by far the most popular prime minister in Israel. It is thought he may quit Likud before April even if he wins Monday's vote.

A survey published in the Yediot Ahronot newspaper yesterday found that a new party led by Mr Sharon would win 36 seats in the Knesset, just four less than Likud's current total. It found that if Mr Sharon breaks away, a Likud part-led by Mr Netanyahu would gain only 14 seats.

In a separate development, Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, took its victory celebrations over the Gaza withdrawal to the West Bank yesterday with a military-style parade in Ramallah.

Addressing, a crowd of several thousand, the Hamas leader, Hassan Youssef, ruled out any change in the movement's charter calling for the destruction of Israel. "Our arms and our covenant are not tactics or a game," he said as masked men held up Kalashnikov rifles behind him.

Mr Youssef said the movement will be including women candidates on its list for the January legislative elections. Hamed Bitawi, another Hamas leader, said the Gaza withdrawal would not have come about without Hamas suicide bombings in Tel Aviv. "We will liberate Haifa, God willing," he said.