JERUSALEM, June 15: Rightists opposed to Israel’s Gaza withdrawal plan urged Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Wednesday to hold early elections, a day after stinging him with parliamentary defeats on a string of issues. Tuesday’s no-confidence motions were symbolic only as they lacked the quorum needed to topple the government.

But they coincided with flagging support for the pullout in opinion polls and disquiet over alleged corruption and nepotism and a wave of violent crime.

The votes, which had no direct bearing on the withdrawal plan, also highlighted strains in the coalition between Sharon’s rightist Likud party and the dovish centre-left Labour party, which supports the pullout.

“There is no way of understanding such a smear campaign to paint Likud as the source of corruption and evil in Israel except as a political attempt to undermine the decision of the Israeli public,” Sharon told the raucous chamber.

He was referring to parliamentary votes, upheld by a Supreme Court ruling last week, paving the way to Israel’s first evacuation of Jewish settlements from occupied territory that Palestinians want as state.

Parliament speaker Reuven Rivlin said the no-confidence measures, in which some members of a Likud party riven over the Gaza plan voted in favour or stayed away, showed a government on its last legs and early elections in the offing.

“We’ve never before seen the government fail in four straight votes. Its days are numbered. Disarray (reigns). (We should) put an early election bill on the agenda and organize to choose a date,” said Rivlin, a Likud foe of the Gaza plan.—Reuters