Sharon seeks coalition for Gaza pullout

JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has won agreement from veteran opposition leader Shimon Peres to try to forge a unity government that could push through a Gaza pullout plan.

In a warning to rebels in his right-wing Likud party on Monday, Sharon threatened to call early elections if they did not back his efforts to broaden the government and ensure the withdrawal.

Sharon, sapped by the departure of former far-right allies furious at the Gaza plan, invited Peres and his centre-left Labour party to look at forming a coalition that could remove Jewish settlers from the occupied territory.

"We will enter negotiations," Peres told Labour parliamentarians after speaking to Sharon. "We must leave Gaza, we must take down the settlements."

Israel's oldest political warhorses, friends for decades despite their rivalry, met at breakfast to discuss forming a coalition. Peres said further negotiations still depended on winning party acceptance in a ballot on Tuesday.

Sharon's initiative for unilateral "disengagement" from conflict with the Palestinians means abandoning all 21 Gaza settlements and four of 120 in the West Bank by late next year. Both territories were captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

Israel's cabinet approved the withdrawal project after Sharon fired two far-right ministers, but that cost the former general the majority in parliament he will need next year if he is to push through the phases of the US-backed plan.

Most Israelis would like to part with Gaza, where 7,500 settlers live in heavily guarded enclaves among 1.3 million Palestinians - but the far-right fiercely opposes it.

COALITION OBSTACLES

Sharon told Likud party members, suspicious of efforts to woo Peres, that he would have to bring in Labour without sufficient backing from the current coalition.

"If you don't want either, then we have to go to elections," he said. "There will be no choice."

As the price for joining a coalition, Peres, an 80-year-old Nobel peace laureate, has demanded a faster pullout and also wants talks with the Palestinians -- who fear they will get Gaza only at the cost of a stronger Israeli grip on the West Bank.

Insiders said another obstacle was that Peres appeared to want to return to the foreign ministry in a new coalition, but sacking Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom could strengthen opposition to 76-year-old Sharon within his Likud party.

Anger at the possibility that Labour could join the government is already bubbling vigorously in Likud, many of whose members are against giving up any territory and say Sharon's pullout plan would "reward Palestinian terror".

Labour and Likud formed a shaky pact in Sharon's first term from 2001-2003, but it fell apart in a row over funding for Jewish settlements.

Violence has surged in Gaza since Sharon set out his withdrawal plan early this year.

Tanks and armoured bulldozers pushed into the Gaza town of Khan Younis early on Monday to demolish what the army called gunposts and firing positions for rockets and mortars.

A 70-year-old man was killed when his home was bulldozed, medics said. Paralysed, he was unable to leave. The army said troops made all efforts to get people out, but did not search all buildings for fear they would be booby-trapped.

- REUTERS