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| By Associated Press March 25, 2005 |
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Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Gaza withdrawal plan faces its final political battle next week, a budget vote that could either remove a difficult hurdle to a pullout this summer or bring down his government, forcing new elections and possibly thwarting the plan.
Just days before the vote, officials scrambled to gather the necessary support among opposition legislators and rebellious members of the governing coalition to ensure the survival of the government.
"We have to be sure we have a majority and we're not sure. We don't know," said Sharon spokesman Assaf Shariv.
Many Israeli political commentators believe Sharon will have no trouble securing a majority of the budget vote, though not before considerable last minute political haggling.
Though a majority in parliament have repeatedly supported the Gaza pullout plan, Sharon's government could fall because opponents of the withdrawal have joined with those opposed to the budget for fiscal reasons.
Rebel lawmakers within Sharon's badly riven Likud Party have blocked passage of the long-overdue 2005 spending plan in an attempt to block the pullout from the Gaza Strip and four West Bank settlements scheduled to begin in July.
If the budget does not pass by the March 31 deadline, parliament will be forced to disband and new elections must be held within 90 days, a development that will at least stall and potentially torpedo the withdrawal.
Parliamentary deliberations on the budget are to begin Monday afternoon, with a vote expected a day or two later. Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday he was certain the government would ultimately muster the simple majority the spending plan needs to pass.
A Netanyahu aide said 58 of parliament's 120 lawmakers -- three short of the needed majority -- have lined up behind the budget, while 56 continue to oppose it. That assumes the support of lawmakers who have not yet said publicly and without equivocation that they would back the spending plan.
"There will be a budget Tuesday night or Wednesday night," political commentator Hanan Crystal said. "There is a majority."
However, the politicians are likely to play a game of brinkmanship until the final moments, with lawmakers waiting to see how their colleagues vote before casting their votes, said Yoram Gabbay, a former senior Finance Ministry official. But in the end, the spending plan will be approved, because "no one has an interest in going to elections," Gabbay said.
One-third of Sharon's 40-member Likud faction has broken with him over his "disengagement" plan and have refused to back him on the budget. On Wednesday, he rebuffed their tit-for-tat offer to vote for the spending plan if he would support a national plebiscite on the withdrawal, which he has repeatedly rejected as a delaying tactic.
In the months he has been trying to marshal majority backing for the budget, the prime minister has lobbied unlikely political allies who object to the austerity budget on various grounds.
Arab lawmakers have asked for more money for their communities in exchange for abstaining in the budget vote. And the dovish Yahad party has clearly signaled it would suppress its distaste for a budget it regards as hurting the underclass in the interest of keeping the Gaza pullout on track.
The government also has tried to court the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, which wants more money for social spending, but isn't counting on the faction's support, a government official said.
Right now, Sharon is focusing his efforts on the fiercely secular Shinui party, which pulled out of the government last year after Sharon yielded to the budgetary demands of the religious.
Shinui is considered a weak link in the budgetary opposition because it strongly supports the pullout.
"There is nothing we want more," Shinui lawmaker Ehud Rassabi said.
Sharon planned to meet Saturday night with Shinui head Joseph Lapid in an effort to win his support, Shariv said.
Shinui has said its price for supporting the government is winning government backing for civil marriage, a rollback of the payout to the religious, or formation of a Likud-Labor-Shinui coalition government -- all unrealistic conditions in the current political climate. The Haaretz newspaper reported that Sharon was trying to persuade some of Shinui's 14 members to defy Lapid and vote for the spending plan, though Sharon denied this, according to Israeli media.
Lapid said the party would vote with a single voice.
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