TEL AVIV, Aug 30: Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s bitter rival, Binyamin Netanyahu, launched a bid on Tuesday to topple him as Likud party leader in a power struggle sparked by the evacuation of Gaza settlers.

Likud polls show Netanyahu would rout Sharon in a primary if it were held soon, stirring speculation Sharon may break away from rightists and forge a new centrist party to run in an election due before November 2006.

Likud’s hardline Central Committee is expected to stage a primary as early as November, a move that could reshuffle Israel’s political deck and lead to an early general election.

Sharon, 77, is aiming for a third term.

Netanyahu is the hero of hardline nationalists in a split Likud, saying the pullout will imperil Israel by turning Gaza into an ‘independent terrorist base’ rather than a model for Palestinian statehood as US-led peace mediators hope.

“Ariel Sharon has gone a different way, the way of the left. Likud needs leadership that will repair the damage ... to our state. I believe I can do this and will stand for the Likud leadership and premiership,” Netanyahu told a news conference.

The looming Likud showdown will be a culture clash as well.

It pits Sharon, a stout former general known for hardnosed leadership and distaste for messy debate, against Netanyahu, a US-educated master of the soundbite who revived Israel’s economy, although he is seen by some as prone to posturing.

While many in Likud see Netanyahu as truer to party principles than Sharon, cross-party polls have consistently shown Sharon to be the most popular and respected Israeli leader and more likely to win the next election at the party’s helm.

Most Israelis favour Sharon’s security strategy, which entails ceding more West Bank settlements as part of any final peace deal with Palestinians but keeping the biggest settler blocs in the territory he sees as strategically vital.

Sharon stole a march on Netanyahu’s announcement by lambasting his rightist rival on Monday as someone who quickly ‘panics and loses his cool’ under pressure and calling him unfit to lead Israel in any peace process with Palestinians.

Netanyahu hit back on Tuesday: “You can judge by yourselves which one of us is under pressure, reacting to pressure. What the public wants to know is when will it get a prime minister who stops putting wind in the sails of terrorists and begins to demand things in return for concessions.”

Sharon says his plan extracted isolated settlers from land Israel would not keep under any peace deal and won US acquiescence in a permanent Israeli hold on major West Bank settlements within the Israeli consensus.—Reuters