Sharon's party wants peace with Palestinians

MPs from Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s new Kadima party held their first formal meeting today, sketching out broad policy goals including peaceful co-existence between Israel and a future Palestinian state, but stopping short of adopting a detailed party platform.

Ronnie Bar-On, a party leader said caucus members agreed that a future agreement with the Palestinians should be based on Palestinian statehood, conditional on an end to violence.

“The end of the conflict, the end of fighting between the sides, the end of terrorism. All these things will be clearly laid on the table and presented to the electorate,” Bar-On told reporters after the meeting.

Sharon scrambled Israeli politics a week ago when he quit Likud and set up his own party, objecting to constant backbiting from Likud members opposed to his withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and part of the West Bank, completed in September.

Sharon’s exit, taking with him 13 sympathetic Likud members of parliament and one from the moderate Labour Party, has left Likud as a bastion of hard-line opponents to peace moves with the Palestinians, with polls forecasting it would be decimated in the March 28 election.

Another participant in the Kadima meeting, Abraham Hirschson, said a party committee would be set up to draft a full platform ahead of a general election.

At the start of the meeting, in the parliament building, Sharon denied media reports that he would refuse to sit in a coalition should if include his bitter political rival, former premier Benjamin Netanyahu.

“We rule out nobody from joining us in the future,” Sharon told reporters.

“Any report to the contrary should be ignored.”

The now-leaderless Likud is to choose a new chief in primaries on December 19, and Netanyahu is the front-runner.

Two floors up from the Kadima gathering, new Labour Party leader Amir Peretz convened a meeting of his party’s MPs and appealed for his ousted predecessor not to defect to Sharon’s team.

“I call on Shimon Peres, don’t let them drag you along,” he said. Labour parliamentarian Haim Ramon has already jumped ship, and the 82-year-old Peres, seemingly stung by his surprise defeat in Labour primaries this month, says he is considering his options.

“The decision is a tough one for me,” Peres said in remarks broadcast today before he left Israel for an EU-Mediterranean summit in Barcelona, Spain. “It will take another day or two before I decide. It’s very personal for me.”

Peres’ brother caused an uproar today when he referred to Peretz’ North African origins and called him a “foreign body” in the party once dominated by Israelis of European descent.

Israelis of Middle Eastern background have complained for decades of being marginalised by the Israeli establishment, which is deeply rooted in Europe. It was a rare upset when Moroccan-born Peretz, a fiery union boss, dethroned the suave Belarus-born Peres.

Gigi Peres today compared Labour’s new chief to the late Spanish dictator, General Francisco Franco, saying Peretz’ backers had overrun the party in the manner that Franco’s Falange fascists seized control of Spain after triggering a civil war in 1936.

Gigi Peres noted that at one point in his career, Peretz had left Labour to form his own party, One Nation, only to later merge with Labour. Referring to One Nation, Peres said that Peretz and his supporters “came over from North Africa, took over and shot them (Labour activists) in the back.”

His remarks triggered harsh criticism from Labour activists.

Israel Radio quoted staff in Shimon Peres’ office as saying that the remarks were unseemly and made without his knowledge.

Gigi later apologised in an interview with Channel 2 TV.

“I’m very, very sorry for what has happened,” he said.