AL QUDS, July 3: Israel’s cabinet rejected on Sunday a proposal to delay the start of a Gaza pullout for three months, setting the stage for a showdown between Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his main political rival Benjamin Netanyahu.

The attempt to force Sharon to postpone the withdrawal slated to begin in mid-August was a sharp reminder of the opposition he faces in his right-wing Likud party to the plan he has championed and a sign of internal leadership battles ahead.

The cabinet voted 18-3 against Likud Agriculture Minister Yisrael Katz’s proposed 3-month delay. Netanyahu, a former prime minister who now holds the finance portfolio, supported Katz, who said more time was needed to complete pullout preparations.

Sharon, with backing from his main coalition partner, Shimon Peres’s Labour Party, had been widely expected to beat back Katz’s proposal before a parliamentary vote on the issue on Wednesday that seems certain to go the Israeli leader’s way.

“Any delay is dangerous,” a government official quoted Sharon as telling the cabinet against the backdrop of violence over the past week between Jewish ultranationalists and soldiers who ejected them from a Gaza stronghold.

Ahead of the Knesset vote, a face-off was shaping up between Sharon and Netanyahu, his strongest Likud rival, who an aide said intends to show his disapproval of an August pullout by staying away from Wednesday’s legislative session.

Sharon has signalled he could take Netanyahu’s absence as tantamount to voting in parliament against the government, grounds in Israel for firing a cabinet member. But while flexing his muscles, Sharon would divide the Likud more deeply.

Political commentator Yossi Verter, writing in the Haaretz newspaper, said sacking Netanyahu would also deal “a major shock” to the Israeli economy and stock market.

“If the crisis was planned, then Sharon is striving to split the Likud and form a new political framework,” Verter wrote. “There can be no other explanation for such a dramatic dismissal of Netanyahu, whom even Sharon describes as an excellent finance minister.”—Reuters