AL QUDS, June 20: A backlash was brewing on Sunday against a decision not to indict Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for corruption over a property deal as two MPs filed a petition with the supreme court.

The petitions by Eitan Cabel from the main opposition Labour party and Yossi Sarid, a senior member of the left-wing Meretz party, both called for the court to overturn or reconsider the decision by Attorney General Menacham Mazuz to close the file on a scandal known as the Greek Island Affair, judicial sources said.

The leftist pressure group, the Movement for Quality Government, submitted a similar petition to the court last week, after Mazuz's announcement on Tuesday. Sarid said in a statement that an indictment of Sharon would have served as a valuable deterrent to an increasingly corrupt political culture and criticised Mazuz for performing a whitewash.

"The corruption in Israel today is now more dangerous than in all the Arab countries put together," said Sarid. The outgoing chief state prosecutor Edna Arbel had recommended in April that Mazuz indict Sharon for allegedly receiving bribes from contractor David Appel.

Appel has already been indicted on charges of trying in 1998 to bribe then foreign minister Sharon through Sharon's son, Gilad, in exchange for their help in securing a major Greek property deal.

But Mazuz announced there was insufficient evidence to indict Sharon and was fiercely critical of the conduct of Arbel and her team of investigators. Sarid said that Mazuz, far from drawing a line under the whole affair, had "left a stain on the whole prosecutor's office and damaged public confidence in the whole judicial apparatus."

Mazuz appeared to have been determined from the outset to clear Sharon's name, he added. "The fact that he rejected the unequivocal recommendation (to indict Sharon) from a highly qualified team of professionals in the prosecutor's office ... raises doubts about his own considerations."

An editorial in the top-selling Yediot Aharonot said on Sunday that no Israeli could have swallowed the revelations of "the business culture uncovered in the (Greek Island) investigations, without their getting stuck in his throat."

"He (Mazuz) has left the public with a nagging feeling that the dam has burst and corruption is sweeping the country, because there is nobody to enforce the law." Sharon is still not out of the woods as he remains under suspicion over a 1.5-million-dollar loan from South African businessman Cyril Kern that was allegedly used by the premier to refund contributions to his 1999 campaign for the leadership of his Likud party after they were deemed irregular. -AFP