Israel's parliament easily voted down a bill on Monday calling for a national referendum on Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Gaza withdrawal plan, rejecting the last-ditch attempt to torpedo the plan and sparking settler threats of civil war.
With the referendum's failure and the expected approval of this year's state budget later this week, the pullout appears to have weathered all legislative threats against it.
Demoralized by the defeat, settlers said they would move their fight into the streets, promising to bring 100,000 protesters to the settlements slated for evacuation to prevent the withdrawal. They also pinned their hopes on the Supreme Court, which agreed on Monday to hear a challenge to the pullout.
Approval of a referendum would have almost certainly delayed the withdrawal, scheduled for this summer, and could have brought down Sharon's government and forced new elections. Sharon has repeatedly rejected calls for a national vote as a stalling tactic. Opinion polls show a large majority of Israelis back the Gaza withdrawal.
Opponents of Sharon's "disengagement" plan, which will remove all 21 Gaza settlements and four in the northern West Bank, lobbied vigorously for the referendum.
Uzi Landau, a withdrawal opponent in Sharon's own Likud Party, met with Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual leader of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish Shas Party, to try to persuade him to support the referendum. Shas controls 11 seats in the 120-member parliament.
Yosef opposes a Gaza withdrawal but instructed the Shas legislators to oppose the referendum anyway, fearing a national plebiscite would set a precedent that would give Israel's secular majority a weapon to use against the ultra-Orthodox minority.
After a rowdy debate, repeatedly interrupted by the shouts of angry lawmakers -- several of whom were ejected -- the Knesset overwhelmingly defeated the proposal 72-39.
"This is a dramatic statement of the Israeli parliament that disengagement is going to be carried out as planned," Vice Premier Ehud Olmert said.
Settlers, thousands of whom protested across from the Knesset, said the vote would split Israeli society.
The government missed a chance to "prevent a violent confrontation and civil war," the Settlers Council said in a statement.
The vote exposed the deep divisions in Likud, a hawkish party filled with settlers and their allies that was stunned by Sharon's sudden reversal last year of his longtime policy of backing settlement building. Sharon says the pullout will help Israel hang onto parts of the West Bank.
Only 13 of Likud's 40 legislators voted against the referendum, forcing Sharon to rely on the support of dovish parties and Arab legislators.
The disengagement plan has repeatedly won Knesset votes. In what will likely be its final legislative test, Sharon must get his budget passed by tomorrow, a near certainty after the opposition Shinui Party agreed over the weekend to support the spending plan.
The battle now moves to Israel's Supreme Court, which agreed Monday to hear a challenge to the law providing the legal framework for the Gaza withdrawal. The hearing is set for April 8 before an expanded panel of 11 judges, the Courts Administration said. Such a large panel is generally reserved for landmark cases.
Israeli legal analyst Moshe Negbi said the court decided to hear the case to show that justice was being done, but it was highly unlikely to strike down the law.
"The most [opponents] can hope for ... is that the court will say that the compensation is not high enough," he said.
Also on Monday, Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia sharply criticized the US after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reiterated support for Israel's plans to keep large Jewish settlement blocs in the West Bank. "This [US] policy is completely incomprehensible," Qureia told reporters.
Israeli officials have confirmed plans to build 3,650 homes around the Maaleh Adumim settlement near Jerusalem. With the expansion and the construction of a separation barrier, Israel would effectively cut off east Jerusalem, the Palestinians' intended capital, from a future state in the West Bank.
A senior Israeli Defense Ministry official said on Monday that the Maaleh Adumim project, originally conceived in 1999, could take years to begin. Building permits cannot be issued because the status of the land has not been determined, and the ministry expects court challenges that could last for years, the official said on condition of anonymity.
In any case, Israel has already begun construction of a major junction that would allow West Bank Palestinians to access east Jerusalem, the official said.
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
RSS