Sharon Defeats Intraparty Bid for an Early Primary

Two weeks after Israel completed its withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon narrowly defeated a bid Monday by hard-line members of his conservative Likud Party to punish him for the pullout by moving up its primary election.

The Likud’s Central Committee, the party’s main policymaking arm, voted down a proposal by Sharon’s main rival, Benjamin Netanyahu, to hold the primary as early as November, rather than next spring, as scheduled. The effort was spearheaded by the party’s right wing, which had fiercely opposed Sharon’s plan to remove Jewish settlers and soldiers from Gaza and the northern West Bank.

The decision, passed by 52% of the 3,000-member Central Committee, marked a key victory for Sharon over Netanyahu, a onetime prime minister who wants to return to that office. It also frees Sharon for now of having to decide whether to leave Likud, which he joined in the 1970s.

Sharon viewed the bid for an early primary as an attempt to oust him as Likud’s leader, and his aides threatened that he might bolt to form a groundbreaking alliance with leading figures from the left-leaning Labor Party and secular-rights Shinui Party, or to assemble a less expansive new party.

Monday’s results may postpone such calculations until after Likud primaries, which will probably take place by May if Sharon’s governing coalition remains intact until then.

Sharon spokesman Raanan Gissin said the vote represented an endorsement of the Gaza withdrawal and a move by Likud to the center of Israeli politics.

“It’s a victory of the sane and sober Likud, a victory of the center over the margins, over the extremists,” Gissin said. “It proved that those who eulogized Sharon and eulogized Likud have to reconsider.”

But some analysts said that by staying with Likud, Sharon may be forced to take a tougher line in dealings with the Palestinians in order to appeal to his party’s right-wing voters in an expected primary battle with Netanyahu. Leftist politicians said the vote did not heal Likud’s ideological fissures.

Sharon remains Israel’s most popular politician, especially after the relatively smooth pullout from Gaza and four small settlements in the West Bank. Opinion polls consistently show him outperforming Netanyahu and other potential rivals in a general election, currently scheduled for November 2006.

The Likud committee’s vote had been draped in suspense, with polls predicting a close outcome. During the all-day balloting at a Tel Aviv fairground, Likud activists held up placards extolling their competing views, and the tensions produced scattered scuffling.

Voting was extended an hour to give delegates more time to get to the site after Israeli police clamped down on roads in northern Israel in search of a vehicle suspected of carrying Palestinian militants planning an attack.

The voting coincided with sporadic violence in the Gaza Strip following three days of rocket fire by Palestinian militants and retaliatory missile strikes by the Israeli air force.

The violence ebbed somewhat after Hamas, facing threats of an extended Israeli offensive, announced Sunday it would stop attacking Israel from Gaza.

But on Monday, more rockets flew over the border into southern Israel, and the Israeli military fired missiles into empty areas in Gaza that it said were used as launchpads. Early today, Israeli helicopters fired missiles at other targets. The army also said it had arrested 82 suspected members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the West Bank.

A missile strike Sunday killed a top Islamic Jihad military leader in Gaza, and afterward, the group promised to keep up attacks from the territory.

The back-and-forth violence was the most sustained since Israel and the Palestinians agreed to a cease-fire in February. After that accord, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas got the main militant groups to agree to observe calm.

In the West Bank, the body of an Israeli man who had apparently been kidnapped and slain by Hamas militants was found Monday near Ramallah, Israeli media reported.

The Likud balloting was marked by internal rancor left over from the previous evening, when Sharon stalked from the Central Committee gathering after his microphone went dead. The two camps accused each other of silencing the microphone at the moment when Sharon was to speak.

Pro-settler Likud members had seen early primaries as a way to punish Sharon for withdrawing settlers and troops from Gaza after a 38-year occupation.

Many Likud activists were angry that Sharon pushed ahead despite losing a referendum among party voters on the evacuation in May 2004. Those activists later proposed having the pullout go to a nationwide vote, a move the prime minister rejected.

Netanyahu, who quit as finance minister about a week before the withdrawal began, accused Sharon of giving in to Palestinian violence and abandoning Likud’s long support for expanding Israel’s presence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Sharon’s camp pointed to numerous polls that showed Likud winning fewer seats in the parliament, or Knesset, in a general election if led by Netanyahu. Sharon portrayed the push for an early primary as an effort by an extremist fringe to oust him.

Polls indicated that a party rupture, with Sharon running at the head of a new centrist faction, could mean a loss of 20 or more Knesset seats for Likud, now the largest party with 40 of 120 seats.

A majority of delegates may have been swayed to back Sharon out of fear of losing parliamentary seats and patronage largess without him as the party’s standard-bearer, said Gideon Doron, a political science professor at Tel Aviv University. “Those who voted for Sharon are less concerned with ideology than with their jobs,” he said.

Yoel Hasson, 32, chairman of Likud’s youth group, said now wasn’t the time to change leaders. “The party has gone through an ideological crisis. People are confused and need time to decide who will head the party.”

But Nisim Nahim, 69, a former school inspector who voted in favor of an early primary, disagreed. “Sharon has made the Central Committee the object of ridicule,” he said. “He does whatever he wants and doesn’t consult with anyone.”

Special correspondent Vita Bekker in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.