MIDDLE EAST: Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon last night narrowly survived a potentially humiliating political defeat when his ruling Likud Party rejected a bid by his arch rival Benjamin Netanyahu to oust him.
Mr Sharon fended off an early leadership challenge when the party's 3,000-strong central committee voted in his favour in a crucial internal poll which was effectively a referendum on the party leadership.
According to Likud polling officials, committee members had voted by a margin of 51.3 per cent to 47.6 per cent to reject a proposal backed by the hardline Mr Netanyahu to bring forward a contest to re-select the party leader from next April to November.
Yesterday's ballot follows months of internal party dissent over Mr Sharon's withdrawal of settlers from the Gaza Strip, with Mr Netanyahu hoping that a vote to move up the leadership primaries would cement his bid to topple Mr Sharon.
Mr Netanyahu had sought to capitalise on anger among right wing Likud members who viewed the Gaza withdrawal, completed a fortnight ago, as a move which would make the country more vulnerable to terrorist attack.
The outcome of the ballot is an embarrassing defeat for Mr Netanyahu who resigned from his cabinet post last August in order to launch his Likud leadership bid and has vigorously campaigned within the party in support of early primaries.
It is likely to precipitate a major sea change within the dominant rightist Likud Party which Mr Sharon helped found more than three decades ago.
Mr Sharon's success considerably weakens the influence of the ultra-nationalist factions backed by the settler movement and led by Mr Netanyahu as well as another leadership rival, Mr Uzi Landau. However, Mr Sharon will have to work hard to bolster internal support and reunite a party bitterly divided over his Gaza initiative. He will still face competition from Netanyahu in the party primaries scheduled for next April.
Voter turnout for yesterday's ballot was high, at 91 per cent, and the 12 hour polling period was extended by one hour to 11pm local time (9pm Irish), reportedly to accommodate members whose journeys to the Tel Aviv voting centre were disrupted by a security alert.
As polling progressed yesterday, the Sharon and Netanyahu-Landau camps accused each other of election fraud.
Had Mr Sharon's camp lost the poll, it would have been a deeply humiliating blow which analysts had speculated could have prompted him to quit the Likud Party and form a rival centrist party. Polls had indicated such a party would become the new dominant parliamentary force. Despite his embattled position as leader of the Likud, Mr Sharon retains more popularity among the wider electorate than his chief rival, with majority support in the country for his Gaza initiative.
In the midst of his political battles, Mr Sharon yesterday continued a military offensive against Palestinian militants in Gaza, despite a pledge by the militant group Hamas to halt firing rockets at Israeli targets. Following the announcement by a Hamas, several rockets were fired into Israel, but no injuries were reported.
The army yesterday for a third day launched helicopter strikes on at least five buildings in the Gaza Strip which it said were used by Hamas and other militant groups for making or storing weapons.
Troops also arrested 90 alleged Hamas and Islamic Jihad members in fresh raids in the West Bank, bringing to almost 300 the total number of suspects arrested since last weekend.
A senior commander of Islamic Jihad, Mohammed Khalil, became the first Gaza victim of Israel's resumption of targeted assassinations, which it suspended as part of an "period of calm" agreed last February. The group's leader in Gaza, Mohammed al-Hindi, responded to the strike by saying it would no longer observe the de-facto cease-fire, which it has already breached in attacks it says were retaliations for Israeli provocation.
The violence which erupted in Gaza at the weekend is the first since the completion of the withdrawal two weeks ago of 8,000 Jewish settlers and soldiers from the coastal strip which Israel has occupied since 1968.
Meanwhile, Mr Sharon was prevented from making a final appeal to central committee at a stormy meeting on Sunday night when his microphone failed in what appeared to be deliberate power cuts. After unsuccessful attempts to fix the public address system, Mr Sharon left the gathering, while his supporters and opponents accused each other of sabotage.