Sharon Cancels U.S. Trip, Focuses on Gaza

JERUSALEM —  Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced Sunday that he would cancel a scheduled trip to the United States next week and devote his energies to revising the Gaza Strip withdrawal plan that his Likud Party rejected last week.

Aides said Sharon would spend the next two to three weeks consulting with ministers before submitting a new proposal. They said changes were likely to be minor.

“The basic plan will not be changed,” said a senior government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The new version might call for evacuating the Jewish settlements in phases rather than all at once, the official said.

The original proposal called for unilateral evacuation of all 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip and four others in the northern West Bank. In a May 2 referendum, 60% of Likud voters rejected the plan after settlers mounted a feisty opposition campaign.

Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a Sharon rival, said Likud ministers were obliged to abide by the party’s rejection and urged the premier to craft a new proposal capable of winning Likud support. Netanyahu had endorsed the original plan, but angered Sharon by refusing to campaign for it.

After the weekly Cabinet meeting Sunday, Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, a Sharon ally, said the prime minister had no choice but to push anew for the Gaza Strip pullout.

Even as debate over Sharon’s plan continued, Israeli troops killed two Palestinian militants who opened fire on a memorial service in the Gaza Strip for a settler and her four children, who were slain in a highway ambush by Palestinian gunmen on the day of the Likud referendum. Sunday’s fierce shootout, captured by Israeli television crews, sent mourners scrambling for cover behind a bulletproof bus. None were injured.

Sharon’s plan received the endorsement of President Bush during the prime minister’s visit to Washington last month. Sharon had planned to visit Washington next week for a gathering of the America Israel Political Action Committee, a pro-Israel lobbying group. He had hoped to meet Bush and U.S. Sen. John F. Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, but those appointments were not yet arranged.

Sharon is under pressure to act quickly. His leading coalition partner, a centrist party called Shinui, has threatened to quit the government unless there is progress toward peace. Israel’s attorney general has said he would decide by the end of May whether to issue an indictment against Sharon in a bribery case, a decision that could affect the future of his withdrawal plan.

Shinui’s leader, Justice Minister Tommy Lapid, said Sunday that a revised plan should include a renewal of negotiations with the Palestinians.

“We cannot say now, ‘This is it -- the pullout plan was turned down, it’s all over, everything is back to where it was before, contrary to the opinion held by the Americans, the Europeans, the Arab world, and the majority of Israelis,’ ” Lapid told Israel Radio.

The cancellation of Sharon’s visit comes as the Bush administration is stepping up efforts to win Arab support for Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza. U.S. officials hope to persuade Palestinian leaders that Israel’s withdrawal represents the best hope for restarting stalled peace talks.

The Palestinians welcomed Israel’s departure from the Gaza Strip but feared that Israel would use the move to bolster its claim to portions of the West Bank. Palestinian leaders have said any pullout should come through negotiations.

Palestinian officials were angered last month when Bush backed Israel’s claim to keep land containing the largest Jewish settlements.

The U.S. president triggered more outrage when he said it was unlikely that Palestinians would be able to return to ancestral homes they fled or were expelled from when Israel became a state in 1948.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell will travel to Jordan next weekend for a meeting with Arab leaders. National security advisor Condoleezza Rice is scheduled to meet the following week with Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed Korei in Berlin. Rice would be the highest-ranking American official to meet with Korei.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Sunday that the Palestinians planned to tell Rice: “We are ready. We can be partners. Let’s look forward and not look backward. We think the Americans can help us.”

A U.S.-backed initiative, known as the road map, has been stalled amid violence and the failure by Israel and the Palestinians to fulfill the earliest commitments under the step-by-step program toward peace.

In an interview published in an Egyptian newspaper over the weekend, Bush said establishing a Palestinian state by next year, as called for under the peace initiative, was no longer realistic.

Few observers held out much hope for Palestinian statehood by the end of 2005. But Palestinian leaders took issue with Bush’s assertion, saying the timetable set when the initiative was introduced last year remained feasible.