MALEH ADUMIM: From inside his apartment in the West Bank's largest Jewish settlement, Likud party activist Gidon Ariel is waging a rearguard action against his leader , Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon - a battle that Mr Sharon seems on the verge of losing.

As he pounds the keyboard - updating a database listing which party members support and oppose Mr Sharon's plan to withdraw Jewish settlers and Israeli soldiers from the Gaza Strip - dozens of other like-minded activists are pounding the pavement and working the phones, arguing, cajoling and pleading with Likud members to vote 'no' to Mr Sharon's plan in a party referendum on Sunday.

Just two weeks ago, Sharon was riding high after returning from Washington with a strong endorsement of his disengagement plan and an assortment of US guarantees favourable to Israel, including promises from President Bush that the United States opposed the return of Palestinian refugees to Israel and supported Israel's eventual annexation of Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

But the bottom fell out on Thursday with the release of three surveys of Likud members showing Mr Sharon's disengagement plan going down to a stunning defeat when his party's 193,000 members vote on it Sunday in an advisory referendum. In a survey by the daily Yedioth Ahronoth, 47 per cent of Likud members opposed the plan and 39 per cent favoured it; a poll by the newspaper Maariv showed 45 opposed with 42 in favour; and in a poll by Israel Radio, 47 per cent were against the plan and 43 per cent supported it.

Some of the surveys showed an even wider gap among probable voters. In the Israel Radio survey, for instance, among those who said they were likely to vote, 51 per cent opposed the plan and 43 supported it.

In interviews published and aired on Thursday, Mr Sharon sounded desperate and seemed to be relying on his leadership and charisma to pull him through, saying that a vote in favour of the plan was a vote of confidence in him. He stopped short of threatening resignation if the plan is defeated.

"You can't support me and not vote in favour of disengagement," he told Maariv. "It doesn't work that way. Those who want me have to vote with me."

Defeat of the plan, he told Israel Radio, would damage Israeli-US relations, the economy and the stock market. He said it would lead to the downfall of the Likud and would be a major victory for Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and the radical Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, which has been one of the main groups waging a suicide bombing campaign against Israel for more than three years.

It was unclear whether Mr Sharon could marshal the forces necessary to turn the numbers around in such a short time, especially since the opposition - as illustrated by Ariel - is highly motivated, ideologically driven and well organized. The political ramifications of a defeat are equally uncertain, with some analysts saying Mr Sharon would have to resign, given his enormous personal and political investment in the proposal.

"If he fails, he will try to find the most promising way to have his own way after all," said Abraham Diskin, a political science professor at Al Quds's Hebrew University. "He might call for early elections."

Mr Sharon has done almost nothing to build support for the plan at the grassroots level, relying almost exclusively on his political triumph in Washington two weeks ago and a series of television and newspaper interviews to generate publicity about his proposal. Some of the best-known and most popular cabinet minister from the Likud - most notably Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom - have given only lukewarm endorsement to the plan and have not actively campaign for its passage.

"What's surprising is that Mr Sharon was kind of aloof," said Gideon Doron, a professor at Tel Aviv University. "It takes some hard work - which he hasn't done."

A senior government official close to Mr Sharon, who said he could not be quoted by name because of prohibitions against civil servants being involved in party politics, said that Mr Sharon was handicapped by party limitations on campaign spending, while the opposition was being funded by the Yesha Council of Jewish Settlements, Israel's main settlement organization. Mr Sharon was also disappointed by the lacklustre support of some Likud cabinet ministers, the official said.

In responding to pollsters, he said, Likud members "were voting with their hearts, but the day they go to the polls for the referendum, when have to make a critical choice and shoulder this responsibility, I think they will vote differently."

Sunday's referendum is not legally binding, although initially Sharon's advisers said he would be morally bound by it and would do as instructed by the Likud's members. But as support for the plan collapsed in the last two weeks - supporters went from a 22 per cent lead in a poll published in Yedioth Ahronoth on April 15 to an eight percent deficit in the survey released on Thursday - Mr Sharon reversed himself, saying he would take the plan to his cabinet and Israel's parliament, the Knesset, whether or not it was approved by the Likud.

But with the plan facing a potentially lopsided defeat, it is not clear that Sharon could muster the 12 votes necessary to get the plan though his cabinet either. While the Likud has 14 seats in the 23-member cabinet, four Likud members are on record opposing the plan.

While the prime minister and his supporters scoffed at a traditional media campaign, opponents of the disengagement plan rallied supporters to man phone banks and go door-to-door to twist Likud arms. They plastered the streets with posters saying "Disengagement (Equals) Suicide" and "You vote in favour, you get Peres," a reference to the head the Labour Party, Shimon Peres, who as a father of the much criticized 1993 Oslo peace accords is anathema to many Likud members. If right-wing parties bolt Sharon's coalition, political analysts consider it likely that Labour would step in to give Mr Sharon a majority and keep his government afloat.

On Tuesday, Israel's Independence Day, about 60,000 people visited Gaza's Gush Katif settlement to protest Mr Sharon's plan, under which 21 settlements with about 7,500 residents would be evacuated. Opponents also are distributing postcards of a popular rabbi, Yizhak Kaduri, saying that the "dangerous plan stands in contradiction with the holy Torah and endangers all the people of the Holy Land."

In Maleh Adumim, the West Bank's largest Jewish settlement with more than 30,000 residents, Likud activist Ariel said he and others began mobilizing against Mr Sharon's plan from the moment it was announced, seeing it as a dangerous precedent that could lead to the abandonment of West Bank settlements. Others fear that Palestinians will see the Gaza evacuation as proof that terrorism pays.

"It's the coercive expulsion of more than 7,000 people from their homes," Ariel said, noting that some had lived there for 30 years.

Several hundred volunteers placed at least two phone calls to each of the 1,437 Likud members who live in Maleh Adumim, Ariel said, and then visited their homes at least twice, some with a 10-minute video about the Gaza settlements on laptop computers. Then a friend was designated to call the members. Finally, on Sunday, "We're going to pick them up in a rickshaw if we have to, to take them to vote," and a family for the Gaza settlements will be outside the polling station to make last minute appeals.

"Sharon can't uproot 7,000 people from their homes, each with 50 people camped out in their living rooms," Ariel said. "It won't happen." -Dawn/The LAT-WP News Service (c) The Washington Post.