Sharon quits right-wing Likud party

Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon is leaving the Likud party he founded 32 years ago to form a new movement, one of his top advisers said today.

Asked if Sharon had decided to leave Likud, Asaf Shariv said: “Yes. He will announce it some time today.”

The confirmation comes as Sharon sets the wheels in motion for an early election this morning, by asking the president to dissolve parliament. The election is expected to be held in March, seven months early.

Sharon’s decision to leave right-wing Likud came after the moderate Labour Party voted to pull out of his coalition government.

Likud activists said last night that Sharon would leave the party he helped set up in 1973 because of Likud opposition to his pull-out from Gaza and part of the West Bank, completed in September.

Today Sharon will ask Israel’s president to dissolve parliament, the first step towards calling an election in March, Army Radio reported.

Advancing Israel’s election from the original November 2006 date would probably sideline Middle East peace moves and counter whatever momentum was gained from Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza and part of the West Bank, completed in September.

Sharon is expected to take several prominent Likud Cabinet ministers with him into his new party, along with some from Labour – possibly including the ousted chairman, elder statesman Shimon Peres.

Sharon’s Gaza withdrawal, a dramatic about-face after decades of settlement building and expansion in the West Bank and Gaza, fractured his party. Rebels in the Likud faction in parliament withheld support from his initiatives, even preventing him from adding two supporters to his Cabinet – demonstrating that Sharon’s government could not function.

Sharon’s departure will leave Likud as a bastion of hardliners who oppose compromise with the Palestinians.

“I regret Sharon’s decision to leave and would have preferred that he continue his struggle within Likud,” said Likud MP Ehud Yatom, one of the leaders of the internal rebellion against Sharon.

At least five Likud Cabinet ministers have said they will compete for Likud leadership after Sharon’s exit.

Polls in weekend Israeli newspapers showed that Sharon at the head of a new party would scramble the electoral picture completely, with Likud as the main loser, and Labour under its new leader, Amir Peretz, increasing its strength.

The Labour decision to leave Sharon’s government came at a party convention by a show of hands, following Peretz’s wishes. With Labour out and Sharon’s coalition crumbling, attention turned to setting an election date.

Meanwhile, Palestinians are concentrating on their own parliamentary election, set for January 25, with the violent Islamic Hamas running candidates for the first time and posing a significant challenge to the ruling Fatah Party of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.