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Humi liated by his own party and under pressure from the opposition to call new elections, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon appears in no position to ensure the implementation of his Gaza pullout plan.

"A leader without a party" and "loser" were just some of the irreverent headlines in yesterday's papers as Sharon began a week-long break at his ranch in the southern Negev desert to lick his wounds.

Before departing, Sharon insisted he had no intention of abandoning his plan to pull settlers out of the Gaza Strip despite a vote by his Likud party barring him from bringing the main opposition Labour faction into government – a move widely regarded as crucial to the project getting through parliament.

"I will continue to do what is good for the people of Israel as I have promised: to bring peace and security," a bullish Sharon told the top-selling Yediot Aharonot daily yesterday.

"I am determined to implement the disengagement plan and evacuate the Gaza Strip and the settlements of northern Samaria at the end of next year," he added in reference to four small Jewish enclaves in the northern West Bank which are also to be uprooted under the terms of his disengagement plan.

The vote however has severely limited the 76-year-old Sharon's room for manoeuvre.

He could simply ignore the Likud vote and invite Labour into government or else call new elections.

But Yediot said that his most likely course of action would be to try and struggle on with his present minority administration or invite the ultra-Orthodox parties into government and hope to gain parliamentary approval for the disengagement with backing from Labour outside the cabinet.

However such a strategy is dependent on Labour playing ball.

Party leader Shimon Peres, eager for a last taste of power at the ripe old age of 81, has called for elections, well ahead of the scheduled date of November 2006.

"We cannot accept the country's fate being in the hands of a few hundred people opposed to the will of the majority of the country which favours withdrawal from the Gaza Strip," Peres told journalists.

In a bid to win over doubters within his current cabinet, Sharon has agreed to submit each phase of the evacuation process to a separate vote. Such a strategy leaves his rivals plenty of opportunity to trip him up again.

He has also tried to placate sceptics by approving the expansion of existing West Bank settlements.

But the US-backed roadmap peace plan commits Israel to a complete freeze on settlement activity and Sharon cannot afford to alienate President George W Bush, who provoked Palestinian fury by backing the disengagement plan.

In a warning shot across the bows of Sharon, Bush's National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said in a speech late Thursday that "we believe that the Israelis should live up to their obligations under the roadmap.

"We've been very clear that settlement expansion is not consistent with our understanding under the roadmap," Rice added.

And even if he can manage somehow to cobble together a majority for disengagement, the showdown with the 8 000 Gaza settlers will then come into view.

Many still question his appetite for such a struggle, pointing out that only a handful of the scores of unauthorised and usually uninhabited settlement outposts in the West Bank have been dismantled, more than a year after he agreed to remove them in line with the roadmap.

But Yoel Marcus, a columnist for the liberal Haaretz daily, said that Sharon's determination, steeled by the knowledge that most voters back disengagement, should not be underestimated.

"What happened on Wednesday was an attempt to carry out a targeted assassination of the disengagement from the Gaza Strip.

The continuation will undoubtedly come in the form of more frequent preemptive manoeuvres.

"But Sharon does not have to be deterred, because a massive majority of the nation, including many Likud voters, supports his move." – Sapa-AFP.

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