THE MIDDLE EAST: Israel's much-humiliated Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, was still battling last night to secure a majority among his cabinet ministers for the first stage of an amended plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, which he intends to table for approval on Sunday.
Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak is said to have made an unprecedented offer to help ensure security in the densely populated strip if Israel carries out a full withdrawal, but Mr Sharon, whose own Likud party has already rejected a Gaza pull-out, yesterday failed to win over any more of his ministers, despite a series of desperate one-on-one meetings with several of them.
Mr Sharon has redrafted the disengagement plan - which initially called for a full Gaza pull-out to be completed next year, and which was publicly endorsed last month by US President Bush. He has broken it down into four phases, and ministers on Sunday may be asked to approve only phase one - the evacuation of the three most isolated of Gaza's 21 settlements. In all, fewer than 8,000 Jews live among the Strip's 1.3 million Palestinians.
But Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, the Finance Minister and would-be successor to Mr Sharon, told him yesterday that, no matter how he reworded it, the plan was essentially the same one that was rejected on May 2nd in a referendum of Likud Party members, and that their voice had to be respected.
Needing 12 votes among the 23-member cabinet, the Prime Minister, by most counts, is one vote short.
Aides intimated last night, however, that one of the ministers in the No camp might be ready to abstain or vote Yes come the moment of truth.
Alternatively - and embarrassingly - Mr Sharon may have to postpone the showdown.
Even if he gets "phase one" approved, Mr Sharon may immediately see small right-wing factions bolting his coalition, forcing him to struggle to maintain a parliamentary majority. Then he has to worry about the logistics of forcing highly motivated Gaza settlers to leave their homes.
Set against all this is the overwhelming support for a withdrawal from the mainstream Israeli public, and strong American backing, too.
A further boost is anticipated in the next few days, when Mr Mubarak is said to be ready to transmit a presidential letter promising to deploy effective security personnel to prevent arms smuggling by Hamas and other Palestinian extremist groups into Gaza from Egypt, and to dispatch a contingent of security personnel to help ensure order in the strip.
Mr Mubarak's offer is said to be contingent on a full Israeli pull-out, and on the Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat delegating security control of the strip to the PA Prime Minister, Ahmad Korei.
PA officials yesterday took some 20 international envoys to Gaza's Rafah border area, where Israel recently completed a massive army incursion which it said was aimed at stopping arms smuggling. The PA's Foreign Minister, Mr Nabil Sha'ath, urged international support to rebuild part of the area.
Israel has rejected criticism of its recent house demolitions in Rafah - where 45 Palestinian homes were destroyed and 575 people made homeless, according to figures released by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Last week, the Israeli army's Maj Gen Dan Harel told journalists that 56 houses were demolished in the operation.
Israel insists that some of the buildings were used by Palestinian snipers or as exits for tunnels through which arms were smuggled into the Gaza Strip from under the adjacent border with Egypt.
The Israeli policy of home demolitions was strongly criticised in an Amnesty International report, released on Wednesday, which also accused "Palestinian armed groups", who killed some 200 Israelis in attacks in 2003, of crimes against humanity and deplored the PA's failure to intervene. At least 130 of the Israeli dead were civilians, 21 of them children.