Jerusalem – Benjamin Netanyahu blasted Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Wednesday for withdrawing from the Gaza Strip, formally opening his campaign to unseat him with an appeal to nationalist members of their governing Likud Party.
The split in Israel’s largest party has called into question whether Sharon’s government can live out its term until November 2006 and move ahead on peacemaking with the Palestinians after the Gaza pullout.
Recent polls show Netanyahu could easily best Sharon in Likud primaries and position himself to run for the premiership.
Likud members are enraged that Sharon, the former patron of the settlement movement, evacuated 8,500 settlers from Gaza earlier this month, and they favor primaries in the coming months to oust him as party chief.
Sharon, however, is far more popular than Netanyahu nationwide, and some have suggested he leave Likud to form his own party.
Netanyahu, a former prime minister, resigned as Sharon’s finance minister last month over the Gaza evacuation and on Tuesday announced his candidacy for party leader.
Eyeing hard-line Likud members, Netanyahu opened his campaign Wednesday in a hotly contested area of the West Bank, near Israel’s largest settlement, Maaleh Adumim.
Netanyahu criticized Sharon for freezing a controversial government plan to construct 3,650 homes in the area to block a Palestinian hold there and on nearby east Jerusalem.
Sharon’s Gaza withdrawal, he charged, has raised hopes in the international community that Israel will surrender more land to the Palestinians, including east Jerusalem, which Israel captured in 1967 and considers part of its capital.
“He has created a precedent that will lead to the division of Jerusalem,” Netanyahu told reporters during the tour. “My starting (my campaign) here is not coincidental, because Jerusalem is in danger.”
The United States and the Palestinians have condemned the Israeli construction plan. The Palestinians want to include the West Bank and east Jerusalem in a future state.
