JERUSALEM – Prime Minister Ariel Sharon asked the moderate Labor Party to join his shaky coalition Monday, an alliance that would strongly boost chances for a withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005.
Sharon warned hard-liners in his Likud Party, who oppose a partnership with Labor and a Gaza pullout, that he would call early elections if they stand in his way.
The prime minister and Labor leader Shimon Peres met for an hour Monday. Their aides said a coalition deal is expected quickly, despite possible wrangling over senior Cabinet jobs and Labor’s demands for changes in government policy.
Labor wants to resume contacts with the Palestinians as the withdrawal gets under way, while Sharon insists on a unilateral pullout and refuses to negotiate with Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority.
However, Sharon and Peres – the last two members of Israel’s founding generation still active in politics – are expected to set aside their differences. The 80-year-old Peres, a former prime minister, is seen as eager for a last chance to shape the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and Sharon, 76, needs Peres for political survival.
The two were coalition partners for most of Sharon’s first term, starting in 2001, despite many political disagreements. Before their alliance, Peres had negotiated interim peace deals with the Palestinians while Sharon championed Jewish settlement expansion as a way of preventing Palestinian statehood.
Labor legislators said Sharon’s Gaza withdrawal plan made it possible for the moderate party to join what started out as a center-right coalition in 2003; some of the coalition hard-liners have since quit over the proposed pullback.
Sharon wants to withdraw from all of Gaza, where 7,500 Jewish settlers live among 1.3 million Palestinians, and uproot four isolated settlements in the West Bank by September 2005.
The withdrawals are part of his “unilateral disengagement” plan, which he says will boost Israel’s security and reduce friction with the Palestinians. Sharon has refused to negotiate directly with the Palestinians.
Peres said Monday that a Likud-Labor government must resume contacts with the Palestinians. He said Israel could start withdrawing unilaterally, “but when it comes to implementation, we need another side.” He said Sharon agreed only to limited cooperation with the Palestinians, at the level of field commanders.
Labor was expected to accept Sharon’s coalition invitation today, setting the stage for formal negotiations.
“If the Labor Party enters the coalition, it will bring a cancer into the Likud,” said Uzi Cohen, a member of the party’s powerful Central Committee.
However, Sharon told legislators on Monday that he has no choice but to expand the coalition by bringing in Labor. “But if you don’t want this or that, we can go to elections, that’s the way it is,” Sharon said. “I am saying this in the clearest possible way: This situation cannot continue.”
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