Israel's Opposition Vows To Fight

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's opponents vowed Tuesday to press ahead with their campaign to oust him despite his slim victory in fighting off a challenge to his leadership of the ruling Likud Party.

The political infighting came as Israel pressed ahead with a large-scale offensive against Palestinian militants.

Israeli aircraft fired missiles into Gaza and troops arrested dozens of militants in the West Bank. Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said Israel would renew its policy of pinpoint killings of militants and branded a militant leader's call for a halt to rocket attacks on Israel as inadequate.

"We will continue to respond to terror from Gaza with an iron fist," Mofaz said.

Hamas said the arrests were motivated by a desire to weaken the group ahead of Palestinian legislative elections scheduled for January.

Sharon's 104-vote margin in Monday's vote by the 3,000-member Likud central committee was a blow to party hard-liners who wanted to punish him for his pullout from the Gaza Strip. Sharon's main party rival, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said committee members caved in to the pressure of a "tyrant," without mentioning Sharon by name.

Sharon aides had said the premier might leave the party, call early elections and run as the head of a new centrist party if he lost the vote.

The victory is a coup for Sharon, who has proven time and again that he is a political survivor, reports CBS News Correspondent Robert Berger.

The ballot was ostensibly over a procedural issue: whether to hold elections for party leader in April, as scheduled, or move up the primary to November. Both Sharon and Netanyahu said the ballot amounted to a vote of confidence in the prime minister, who has expressed hope the Gaza pullout would spark peace talks that would ultimately lead to the creation of a Palestinian state.

Sharon did not immediately react to the vote, but Lior Horev, his political adviser, said the victory would buy Sharon time to decide his future. If Likud decides to back his major policies, he will stay; if it doesn't, he will leave, Horev said.

"Either the party stands behind him or he has to choose a different way in order to push forward his agenda," Horev said.
Netanyahu said the fight was not over and said he would prevail in the primaries by tapping into the dissatisfaction of Likud members who believe Sharon betrayed the party's nationalist roots. The close vote showed Likud's bitter divisions, with many members opposed to Sharon's concessions to the Palestinians, he said.

"I have no doubt in the second phase we will win and the Likud will win," Netanyahu said, adding that some members voted "under the pressure of the governing tyrant."

Sharon has other political worries, with his Labor Party coalition partners raising the possibility of forcing elections before the November 2006 timetable if peace efforts stall.

"If Sharon continues on this path, we clearly won't act for early elections," Communications Minister Dalia Itzik of Labor told Israel TV. "But if he is rattled by the central committee and changes his path, we will of course work to bring him down."

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, meanwhile, invited Sharon "to resume with us the permanent status negotiations so we can achieve our endgame."

Renewed fighting with the Palestinians, just two weeks after Israel ended its 38-year occupation of Gaza, has compounded Sharon's political problems. Hamas militants launched dozens of rockets at southern Israel over the weekend, provoking Israeli airstrikes that killed four militants and destroyed suspected weapons facilities in Gaza.

Asked if Israel's defense policy included targeted killings of militants, Mofaz told Army Radio it "includes everything the state of Israel knows how to do."

"The minute there isn't quiet, the terrorist groups won't know quiet," Mofaz told reporters later.

He threatened Hamas' current leaders with the fate of two others who fell victim to Israeli targeted killings. "If Mahmoud Zahar or Ismail Haniya continue firing rockets, we will send them to place where (Abdel Aziz) Rantisi and (Sheikh Ahmed) Yassin are."

Israel killed dozens of militants in targeted attacks in more than four years of violence but suspended the practice after February's cease-fire with the Palestinians. Mofaz's statement about Israel's defense policy was his first public acknowledgment that targeted killings had resumed.
Mofaz also said an Israeli ground invasion of Gaza would be possible as a last resort.

Mofaz scoffed at a call by Zahar, Hamas's leader, to halt the rocket attacks, saying his "words do not satisfy me." Attacks by Hamas proxies haven't stopped, and other militant leaders must also join the call, he said.

On Tuesday, Israeli aircraft fired missiles at three access roads in northern Gaza leading to staging areas for rocket attacks, the military said. Palestinian officials said one missile destroyed a bridge.

Israeli helicopters also fired two missiles at the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis. Palestinian security officials said an office belonging to the ruling Fatah movement and a money-changing store were hit. Israel said the money changer was a Hamas front.

Israel arrested hundreds of Palestinian militants in the West Bank in tandem with the military offensive. The military said 82 Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists were arrested overnight, in addition to 297 militants taken into custody in the previous two days.

The new violence started after a blast Friday at a Hamas rally in Gaza's Jebaliya refugee camp killed 21 people, including a 7-year-old boy who died of his wounds Tuesday.

Hamas said Israeli aircraft had fired missiles into the crowd, which Israel denied.

The Palestinian Authority said the blast was caused when heavily armed Hamas militants mishandled explosives at the rally. On Tuesday, the Palestinian Interior Ministry published a forensic report saying that shrapnel found in the bodies of the victims came from Hamas' homemade rockets.