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Israeli leader reportedly leaving Likud
(AP)
Updated: 2005-11-21 07:37
Israel's dovish Labor Party voted Sunday to pull out of Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon's government, and Sharon reportedly decided to quit his Likud Party to
set up a new movement — beginning a campaign for elections expected in March.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon spreaks
during the weekly cabinet meeting at his Jerusalem office, in this Sunday,
July 17, 2005 file photo.[AP] | Sharon is expected
to take several prominent Likud Cabinet ministers with him to his new party,
along with some from Labor — possibly including its ousted chairman Shimon
Peres.
Advancing Israel's election from the original November 2006 date would likely
sideline Mideast peace moves and counter whatever momentum was gained from
Israel's withdrawal from Gaza and part of the West Bank, completed in September.
Sharon's Gaza pullout, a dramatic about-face after decades of settlement
building and expansion in the West Bank and Gaza fractured his party. Rebels in
the Likud faction in parliament withheld support from his initiatives.
On Monday, Sharon is to ask Israel's president to disperse the parliament,
setting in motion a process leading to elections in March, Army Radio reported.
Increasingly frustrated by the Likud rebellion, Sharon decided on the daring
step of leaving the party he helped create in 1973, according to Likud
activists. That would leave Likud as a bastion of hardline opponents to
compromise with the Palestinians.
"I regret Sharon's decision to leave and would have preferred that he
continue his struggle within Likud," said Ehud Yatom, a Likud member of
parliament who was among the leaders of the internal rebellion against Sharon.
Party leaders said they received the news from Sharon himself.
Polls in weekend Israeli newspapers showed that if Sharon remains in Likud,
it would maintain much of its present strength, while Labor's newly elected
leader Amir Peretz would lead his party to a healthy increase. Sharon at the
head of a new party would scramble the electoral picture, with Likud as the main
loser, according to the polls.
Peretz had pushed for Labor to leave Sharon's government.
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