Sharon Wins Historic Gaza Vote
By Chris McGreal
27 October, 2004
The
Guardian
Israel's
parliament last night voted for the first time in 37 years of occupation
to remove Jewish settlements from the Palestinian territories in a historic
move that Ariel Sharon said paved the way to the end of the conflict.
At the end of two
days of at times raucous and bitter parliamentary debate, Mr Sharon
was forced to rely on the opposition to carry through his "unilateral
disengagement plan" after his Likud party split over the removal
of all Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip and a small part of the West
Bank.
Mr Sharon won, with
67 of the 120 MPs voting for the plan and 45 against. The remainder
abstained.
Israel's deputy
prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said: "The state of Israel is moving
forward. We are going to change the status quo in the Middle East. We
are going to make painful concessions. There is no return from this."
Four cabinet ministers,
including Mr Sharon's arch-rival Binyamin Netanyahu, who voted in favour,
none the less threatened to resign in a fortnight unless the prime minister
agreed to a national referendum on the plan.
The small National
Religious party also threatened to walk out of the government if there
was not a plebiscite.
But Mr Sharon continued
to resist the pressure, saying that a referendum would delay the withdrawal
by a year.
After the vote,
the prime minister swiftly carried out his threat to sack any cabinet
ministers voting against disengagement by dismissing Uzi Landau, the
leader of the ruling party's rebels in parliament.
Mr Sharon's aides predicted that opposition within his party and government
to the plan may force him to put together a new ruling coalition or
call early elections.
Speaking to parliament
on Monday, Mr Sharon broke with his core constituency among the settlers
and right-wing Israelis when he called the vote a "fateful moment
for Israel".
The withdrawal plan
removes only about 8,000 settlers, the bulk living in the Gaza strip.
About 420,000 Jews will remain in Israel's West Bank colonies and east
Jerusalem, occupied in 1967.
But the leader of
the Labour opposition, Shimon Peres, threw his party's weight behind
the plan because he said it was a historic opportunity that would create
momentum toward a resolution of the Palestinian conflict.
"This is a
historic vote that will put the country back on to the right course.
Once we return it will be hard to reverse it," he said.
Palestinian officials
remain deeply suspicious of the plan, saying the withdrawal from Gaza
is designed to shield an expansion of Israeli control in the West Bank.
Nearly half of Likud's
MPs, led by Mr Landau, voted against the disengagement process last
night. "Unilateral withdrawal is simply signalling to the Palestinians
that terrorism rewards and that Israel is in an ongoing retreat.
"This is not
going to reduce terrorism, it is going to boost it," he said.
"We see all
these territories as our homeland. For many of us it's as though they
are encroaching on our very right to be there, but also it casts a shadow
on our ability to really defend ourselves.
"There are
many, many Arabs who hate our guts and want our destruction. We don't
want to see an additional terrorist state on our border."
Some opponents have
accused Mr Sharon of "caving in to terrorism" and of being
a traitor because he is considered the godfather of the settlements
and oversaw the massive expansion of Israel's West Bank and Gaza colonies
during the 70s and 80s.
But the latest opinion
poll, in the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, shows overwhelming
public support for the withdrawal, with 65% of Israelis in favour and
26% opposed.
Several thousand
settlers and their supporters rallied outside parliament, but there
were far fewer protesters than the organisers predicted.
Jonathon Patinkin,
from Beit El settlement in the West Bank, headed three generations of
his family at the protest.
"This is a
battle. We haven't lost the war yet," he said. "If it goes
on we will lose all the settlements. It is only the first step in a
domino effect. Even Jerusalem is at risk."
The protesters waved
signs saying, "Settlements equal security, disengagement equals
transfer" and "Soldiers, disobey orders to evacuate us".
Some of the more
vitriolic slogans of previous rallies calling Mr Sharon a Nazi were
missing after the police warned they would not permit such incitement
at a time when Israel was remembering the ninth anniversary of the assassination
of its former prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin.
In Gaza, Hamas hailed
the vote as a victory for Palestinian resistance.
"The approval
today of the Sharon plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip is a big achievement
of the Palestinian people and the resistance, which alone has pushed
the Zionist enemy to think of leaving Gaza," said the group's spokesman,
Mushir al Masri.
The cabinet still
has to approve four stages of the withdrawal from Gaza.