Sharon wins vote to ensure Gaza pullout

JERUSALEM -- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon easily won a crucial party vote to reinforce his shaky government to carry out his Gaza pullout plan, party officials announced Thursday.\nSharon proposed inviting the dovish Labor Party and the Orthodox Jewish parties to join his government, ensuring a solid majority for his Gaza withdrawal plan in the face of internal opposition from his Likud Party.\nCabinet minister Israel Katz announced the final count of the Likud Central Committee's vote was 62 percent in favor of Sharon's proposal and 38 percent against.\nA loss in the Central Committee could have forced new elections and jeopardized the Gaza withdrawal -- a centerpiece of efforts to restart peace talks with the Palestinians in the wake of Yasser Arafat's death.\nThe win clears the way to adding Labor, a partner solidly in favor of the Gaza pullout and resumption of peace negotiations.\nThere was some opposition among Labor activists to joining their arch-rival Sharon in another government, after their first joint government broke up in 2002. However, party leader Shimon Peres strongly favored entering the government.\nThe Likud committee voted in August against inviting Labor to join the government. But after Sharon fired a key coalition partner for voting against his budget on Dec. 1, his coalition was more tenuous than ever. He had warned that the choice now was Labor or elections.\nA lengthy electoral campaign would have delayed if not completely thwarted his plan to withdraw from Gaza and four West Bank settlements next year.\nWorried about a low turnout that would favor his opponents, Sharon made a rare early morning appeal to his backers.\n"I want to say that we are standing before great opportunities and events that could be historical, and I won't let anything or anyone harm the opportunity of the state of Israel to take advantage of these opportunities," he told Army Radio.\nSharon defied his party and his own ideology when he presented his plan to remove all 21 Jewish settlements from Gaza and four small ones from the West Bank.\nFor decades, Sharon was the patron of the settlements, enabling their construction and expansion, and his Likud hotly opposed conceding any land to the Palestinians or creation of a Palestinian state.\nOver the past year, however, Sharon has changed his policy, but most of his party refuses to go along.\nSharon says the Gaza settlements, with 8,200 Jews living among more than 1 million Palestinians, are untenable and must be removed. He argues the withdrawal would give Israel a better chance to retain its main settlement blocs in the West Bank, where most of the 236,000 settlers there live, and head off international peace efforts unfavorable to Israel.\nBut opponents reject evacuating any settlements as a matter of principle and also warn that an Israeli pullout from Gaza would lead to international pressure to withdraw from the West Bank.\nThe Likud rank and file overwhelmingly voted against the withdrawal in a party referendum May 2. Sharon ignored the vote and pressed ahead.\nLikud has 40 seats in the 120-member parliament, but up to half the Likud members oppose the Gaza withdrawal. Without Labor's 21 votes and at least one smaller ultra-Orthodox Jewish party for insurance against the Likud rebels, Sharon could draw a no-confidence vote at any time and be voted out of office.\nArafat's death Nov. 11 has opened new possibilities for a breakthrough in long-deadlocked Mideast peace talks, since Israel and the United States considered him an obstacle.