Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Sunday abandoned a planned trip to the US this week. During a bruising Cabinet session, he also insisted that he would draw up a new plan to withdraw from settlements in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank regardless of his defeat by members of his Likud party in a referendum.
Sharon's office said the prime minister would be too busy to travel to the US, where he was to address the pro-Israel lobby group, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, and meet the president.
Sharon gave no hint of what his revised proposal might include, but said it would be released in three weeks after consultations with ministers.
PHOTO: REUTERS
His disengagement plan and his defeat in the referendum nine days ago have exposed rifts in the Cabinet, underlined on Sunday when ministers stormed out of the meeting.
Justice Minister Tommy Lapid said that he and his fellow ministers from the Shinui party would resign from the government unless Sharon introduced a new plan.
Avigdor Lieberman and Benny Elon, the rightwing ministers of transport and tourism respectively, walked out of the meeting in protest at the discussion on withdrawal from settlements.
Ministers from Sharon's Likud party also showed uneasiness with the prime minister's direction. Minister without Portfolio Uzi Landau said it was undemocratic to continue discussing settlement withdrawal after Likud had rejected it. Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, a potential rival to Sharon as party leader, urged the prime minister to respect the decision of the party. Sharon held a private meeting with Netanyahu to work out an alternative disengagement plan but the pair could not agree.
Netanyahu and Limor Livnat, the education minister, and Silvan Shalom, the foreign minister, betrayed Sharon by agreeing to back his plan but then refusing to campaign for him, a major factor in his defeat.
At the meeting, Netanyahu told the prime minister that three weeks was not enough time to come up with a proper alternative. He said the Likud poll "is binding for all Likud members, including the prime minister."
Netanyahu said most Likud members would be prepared to make concessions, but not in the midst of terror, Israel Radio reported.
Tommy Lapid, who called for the Cabinet discussion, said a new plan should include the renewal of peace talks with the Palestinians.
"We can't now say, `That's it, they rejected the disengagement plan, we're done, everything is as it was' -- in opposition to the American position, in opposition to the European position, in opposition to the Arab world, in opposition to most of the Israeli public."
Ehud Olmert, the deputy prime minister, said he respected the members of the Likud party but did not believe the referendum result accurately reflected their beliefs.
"I'm not sure that the result reflects the decisive portion of Likud members," he told Israel Radio, citing the voter turnout of about 50 percent.
He told the Cabinet that the results indicate the government must present alternatives.
He also said the disengagement issue would be brought before the Cabinet.
"At some point, there will certainly be a discussion in the government," he said.
While Israeli ministers try to work out their position, there are signs that the Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qureia, who has been sidelined by Sharon's recent proposals, might play a greater role in negotiations.
Condoleezza Rice, the US national security adviser, is due to meet him next week in Germany and Bush said he would write to Qureia to underline that the US still supported the road map.
The rapprochement with Qureia comes after a bad month for American-Arab relations with revelations of US troops torturing Iraqis and the president seeming to give Israel his strongest public demonstration of support by saying that the US recognized large settlement blocks in the West Bank and Palestinians should not have the right to return to homes lost in Israel in 1948.
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