In a bold gamble, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon yesterday asked President Moshe Katsav to dissolve parliament, pushing for a quick March election just hours after deciding to leave his hardline Likud Party and to form a new centrist party.
Sharon's decision to leave Likud sent shock waves through Israel, redrawing the political map, finalizing his transformation from hardliner to moderate and boosting prospects of progress in peacemaking with the Palestinians.
His confidants say Sharon felt Likud hardliners, who tried to block this summer's Gaza pullout, were imposing too many constraints and would prevent future peace moves. Palestinian officials expressed hope yesterday that the political upheaval in Israel would bring them closer to a final peace deal.
Asked yesterday whether he was comfortable with the decision, Sharon said: "Yes, certainly."
Speaking at the start of a meeting with the prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Sharon declined to answer further questions.
The dramatic events began with Sharon's decision late on Sunday, after a weekend of agonizing, to leave the party he helped found in 1973.
Yesterday morning, the prime minister asked Katsav to dissolve parliament, a step that would move the vote to the beginning of March, or eight months ahead of schedule.
Katsav said he would begin consultations immediately with political leaders on moving up an election originally due by next November and disclose his decision on Sharon's request soon.
Sharon made no comment after the meeting.
Katsav must first examine whether any legislator can muster a parliamentary majority and form a new government. But Israeli political analysts said chances were nil.
Mid-day yesterday, Sharon met at his office with 11 breakaway Likud legislators, expected to form the core of the new party.
The new group will reportedly be called "National Responsibility."
Sharon told the legislators the party would adhere to the US-backed "road map" peace plan, which asks Israel and the Palestinians to negotiate the borders of a future Palestinian state.
He said he did not envision unilateral troop pullbacks in the West Bank, Israeli radio stations quoted him as saying.
At the same time, more than 20 Likud lawmakers held their weekly meeting in parliament. The faction chief, Gideon Saar, announced that Sharon had sent a letter announcing his resignation from the party. The oversized brown leather chair, normally reserved for Sharon at the head of the oval table, was pushed to the side.
The acting Likud chairman, Tzahi Hanegbi, said the party would elect a new leader as quickly as possible. The top contender is former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Sharon was to announce the split formally in a nationally televised news conference last night.
Sharon's decision set the stage for a turbulent election campaign.
It would pit a smaller, more hawkish Likud against Sharon and the new Labor Party leader, former union boss Amir Peretz.
Sharon and Netanyahu are bitter political rivals.
Peretz, in turn, rejuvenated the ailing Labor Party with his appeal to Israel's working class and Sephardi Jews of Middle Eastern descent, voter groups that were once largely out of Labor's reach.
One poll yesterday indicated that an alliance of Sharon's new party with the moderate Labor and leftist parties would command a comfortable majority in the 120-member parliament.
Other polls, however, said it was uncertain Sharon could turn the popularity of the pullout from Gaza into electoral victory.
"Sharon is the only credible leader with a national base right now and that is a very powerful card Sharon has to play," said political analyst Gerald Steinberg of Bar-Ilan University. "On the other hand this is totally new territory and third parties have not done well in the past."
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat compared the events to the eruption of a volcano.
"I've never seen anything of this significance," he said. "I hope that when the dust settles, we will have a partner in Israel to go to the end game, toward the end of conflict, toward a final agreement."
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