Likud to Vote on Gaza Strip Exit

Israel’s ruling Likud Party will vote April 29 on Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s hotly debated plan to pull out of the Gaza Strip and four West Bank settlements, a party spokesman said Sunday.

Seeking the vote is an enormous gamble for Sharon because his hard-line party is divided over the plan and approval is far from assured. Sharon has pledged to honor the outcome and could come under growing pressure to resign if he loses.

Likud spokesman Shmuel Dahan said the date was chosen at a meeting of the party’s central election committee. If he wins approval from Likud’s 200,000 members, Sharon reportedly will seek Cabinet and parliamentary approval.

The decision on the date was made a day before Sharon was to leave for Washington, where he will seek President Bush’s endorsement of the plan in a meeting Wednesday. A vote of confidence from Bush would give Sharon an important boost. Several senior Cabinet ministers have said they will not support Sharon without American backing.

The extent of U.S. support for the plan remained unclear. Sharon sent several senior aides to Washington over the weekend to work out final details for the meeting’s agenda.

The United States has said it supports the idea of a Gaza pullout, but only as part of the internationally backed “road map” peace plan.

The road map calls for an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, with final borders to be negotiated between the two sides. The plan, however, has been stalled for months amid Israeli and Palestinian violations.

The Palestinians also demand that a Gaza pullout be part of the road map, and they want a much larger withdrawal from the West Bank.

Saeb Erekat, a Palestinian Cabinet minister, said he had been assured that the United States would not take steps to prejudice an agreement.

Early Sunday, about 400 demonstrators from Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip gathered peacefully outside Sharon’s Negev Desert ranch to protest the withdrawal plan.

In new fighting, Israeli soldiers killed a Palestinian in the West Bank town of Aqraba, near Nablus, as they arrested two militants, witnesses and hospital officials said. Mohammed Abu Kaber was shot in the head as he looked out the window from a house that troops had surrounded, neighbors said.

The army said Abu Kaber was killed by “warning shots.” Soldiers arrested two members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, one of them Abu Kaber’s brother, the neighbors said.