Israeli Party to Follow Path of Sharon

Israel will abandon more Jewish settlements in the West Bank if Ehud Olmert, the acting prime minister, and his Kadima party win an election this month, one of the party’s leaders said Sunday.

Israeli troops would remain after civilians are removed from isolated settlements and resettled elsewhere, said Avi Dichter, who formerly headed the Shin Bet domestic-security agency and now is a leading member of Kadima.

Dichter’s comments during an interview with Israel Radio reinforced expectations that a Kadima government without Prime Minister Ariel Sharon would accelerate the unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank, which Sharon began last summer when he also pulled out of the Gaza Strip.

Sharon, who formed the centrist Kadima movement in November after hard-liners in his Likud Party rebelled over the withdrawal, had not laid out details of further pullouts before suffering a stroke in January that has left him comatose in a Jerusalem hospital.

Dichter’s description of planned withdrawals was more detailed than comments made previously by Olmert, who now leads Kadima into the March 28 election. Dichter said a future pullout would be a “civilian disengagement,” and that the Israeli military would remain in control of abandoned areas.

“The areas evacuated by the civilians will remain in the control of the [army] in order to continue foiling terror in every refugee camp, neighborhood and casbah until a Palestinian partner emerges,” Dichter said.

Olmert, who has said he wants to oversee the drawing of permanent borders, favors keeping three main settlement blocks and a strip of territory along the border with Jordan.

Dichter did not say which settlements would be next to go. But the Yediot Aharonot newspaper reported that the targeted settlements are believed to include several of the most ideologically hard-line communities in the West Bank, including Elon Moreh, Yitzhar and Tappuah.

Residents of the evacuated settlements would be moved into the three main West Bank settlement areas -- Ariel, Maale Adumim and the Gush Etzion block -- or be absorbed into four smaller clusters, the newspaper said.

Kadima holds a lead of about 2 to 1 over both the conservative Likud and the left-leaning Labor Party, although it has slipped a bit in recent polls. Most analysts predict that Olmert, who accompanied Sharon in bolting from Likud, will be in charge of forming the next government.

Last summer’s withdrawals enjoyed the backing of most Israelis, polls showed, and many people joined Kadima because they approve of Sharon’s unilateral approach.

But Likud, now led by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, says the Gaza pullout helped the radical Islamic group Hamas capture the Palestinian parliamentary election in January. Netanyahu contends that further pullbacks will reward violence.

Critics on the left, such as Labor’s leader, Amir Peretz, say unilateral actions by Israel hurt the possibility of advancing the peace process by brushing aside moderates such as Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority. Abbas’ Fatah movement, once dominant in Palestinian politics, lost big in the legislative vote, but he remains president.

Hamas has called on Fatah to join in a national-unity government, but Fatah leaders have so far turned aside the invitations. Fatah’s 135-member Revolutionary Council met Sunday in the West Bank city of Ramallah to plan how to revamp the stunned party, but made no final decision on whether to join a Hamas government.