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Israeli PM faces leadership challenge

Former Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Tuesday that he would seek to oust Prime Minister Ariel Sharon from the premiership and as Likud leader, accusing the prime minister of caving in to terrorism by relinquishing the Gaza Strip to the Palestinians without getting anything in return. The battle for control of the Likud - which ironically means "unity" in Hebrew - ratchets up momentum among Israeli lawmakers to dissolve parliament and hold early elections. Opening a campaign now is likely to delay any new push for peace negotiations with the Palestinians.

The challenge from Mr. Netanyahu, who resigned from Mr. Sharon`s cabinet on the eve of the withdrawal from Gaza and parts of the northern West Bank, highlights how Likud`s ideological crisis over unilateral pullback threatens to tear apart the party that has run Israel`s government for 20 of the past 28 years. It`s the first time any sitting Israeli prime minister has faced being overthrown by a politician of the same political stripe, and analysts say it reflects how the evacuation of 25 Jewish settlements this month in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank could remake Israel`s political map.

A series of polls published in Israeli newspapers showing Sharon trailing Netanyahu among Likud members has spurred speculation the prime minister will break ranks with the party that he helped establish in the mid 1970s. Some have suggested the prime minister could join with Labor leader Shimon Peres and Yosef Lapid, the leader of the centrist Shinui party, and form a political alignment straddling the center of Israeli politics.