Jerusalem – Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has decided to quit the governing Likud Party, which he helped found, and will create a new party to try to win re- election, according to Israel’s army radio and a senior Likud member.
Sharon will announce his decision later today and will ask Israel’s president to dissolve parliament and call for an election within 90 days, according to the normally reliable army radio, citing a source in Sharon’s office.
“Ariel Sharon’s decision is dramatic, unequivocal, to leave the Likud,” the radio quoted the source as saying, and Sharon and a key ally, Tzippi Livni, the justice minister, have begun to contact political allies to join the new party he would lead.
The senior Likud member said, “There are matters that he wants to accomplish that many in Likud would not accept.”
Sharon, 77, has been battling opponents within Likud who opposed Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and four small settlements in the West Bank last summer as a violation of the party’s principles and history.
Sharon’s apparent decision to roll the dice was accelerated by the recent defeat as Labor Party leader of his ally Shimon Peres, 82, who chose to throw support to Sharon and join his ailing coalition to ensure that the Gaza withdrawal was carried out.
But Peres’ successor, Amir Peretz, 53, won over Labor by insisting on breaking the coalition and forcing new elections.
Earlier Sunday, the Labor Party voted to pull its eight ministers out of the Cabinet.
Israel’s president could refuse Sharon’s request for early elections but is more likely to accept. By law, in such a circumstance, elections must take place within 90 days, which would probably mean a vote in early March, preventing Sharon’s enemies in Likud from delaying elections.
Early polls show that a new party led by Sharon would be the largest in the parliament, with some 28 seats out of 120, but he would require other parties to form a coalition.
Likud currently has 40 seats, but Sharon faces severe dissent within the party and its central committee, which regards him as having betrayed the principles of Likud with his willingness to hand occupied territory considered part of the biblical land of Israel over to the Palestinians without negotiations.
Sharon has received significant support from President Bush. But new elections will delay any new moves toward peace, even as the Palestinians plan their own crucial elections for a new legislature Jan. 25.