09/07/2004 By Aluf Benn, Moti Bassok and Mazal Mualem, Haaretz Correspondents, and Haaretz Service Likud legislators who oppose the disengagement plan will meet in Minister Uzi Landau’s office Sunday to discuss how to prevent the Labor Party from joining the government, Israel Radio reported Friday. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has invited opposition chairman Shimon Peres to meet him Sunday to discuss bringing Labor into the coalition. Eleven Likud officials are expected to attend the meeting with Landau, who earlier this year led an initiative to get the pullout plan defeated in the May Likud referendum. Knesset members planning to attend the meeting include Ehud Yatom, Michael Ratzon and Gilad Erdan, Israel Radio said. Labor MK Eitan Cabel and One Nation chairman Amir Peretz are also opposed to Labor’s entry into a unity government. „I don’t think Shimon Peres is right,” Cabel told Israel Radio on Friday. Meanwhile, Peres said Friday the Labor Party will demand that Israel evacuate the Gaza Strip in coordination with the Palestinians, speed up the pullout and change the economic policy instituted by Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. „We must leave Gaza as soon as possible,” he told Israel Radio. Senior Labor leaders on Friday were working toward having Peres bring to the party’s central committee a list of ministerial candidates in case Labor does join the coalition, Israel Radio reported. Sharon’s announcement of coalition talks puts Labor in a quandary – on the one hand, it wants to act as an opposition and push for early elections, and on the other hand, it seems eager to join the government. Moving ahead with disengagement would form the basis for cooperation in a unity government. One of the main disagreements between Sharon and Peres is over the place of the Palestinians in the process. But Peres said earlier this week that from his party’s perspective, the right would ideally carry out the disengagement plan on its own. Peres would like to see cooperation with the Palestinian Authority, headed by Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia. Sharon strongly opposes any negotiation with the Palestinians before they complete reforms and stop terror. However, he is prepared to coordinate the transfer of evacuated settlements to them. Peres is prepared to grant the request of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat to move from his West Bank headquarters in Ramallah to the Gaza Strip in return for unifying the Palestinian security services. Sharon opposes this move; he wants Arafat to remain isolated in his Muqata headquarters. The political system has believed negotiations for a national unity government were in the offing after the tied no-confidence vote in the Knesset on Monday, drawing the conclusion it would be difficult to control a minority coalition of 59 MKs. „The moment of truth is coming,” Sharon’s bureau said Thursday, although it emphasized the meeting was a first step only.
Sharon and Peres are said to prefer a unity government rather than elections, in which both would face considerable risks. Sharon’s announcement came after a series of secret talks with Peres. The Labor chairman is interested in the Foreign Ministry portfolio, rather than the finance or defense ministries, where he would have to orchestrate the evacuation of settlements. Labor fchair Dalia Itzik said the „price tag” for the party joining the government would be high, with demands for changes in the government’s economic policy. Sharon told Likud MKs he is not enthusiastic about cooperating with Labor. However,in the present constellation in the Knesset, Labor is the only anchor for an expanded coalition, because the ultra-Orthodox parties and Shinui do not want to sit in the same government. Shinui chairman Yosef Lapid supports Labor’s joining the government so as to move ahead with disengagement. A secular unity government had been a plank of the Shinui campaign platform. Sharon also told the country’s economic pilots that „the disengagement plan I brought before the cabinet is in accordance with the administration headed by Bush, who is a friend of Israel. Relations between us and the U.S. are a strategic asset for Israel from every perspective: defense, political, and economic.” „I have no doubt that in the near future we will begin to feel the positive effects of the disengagement plan in the economic sphere as well.” In a barb directed at Netanyahu, Sharon said: „Clearly, without a political horizon, the economy cannot take off. You can’t encourage foreign investors to come here, but on the other hand present Israel as refusing peace, with all the international implications. It simply doesn’t work. Whoever thinks it does may be deluding himself.”
