Can Sharon fend off Netanyahu’s challenge?

jerusalem | The agreement under which Egyptian forces will guard a perilous corridor along the border with the Gaza Strip could prove key to Ariel Sharon's future.

The success or failure of the agreement with Egypt goes to the heart not just of Sharon's Gaza withdrawal strategy but of his political leadership: Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is highlighting the potential dangers of the agreement in a campaign, now moving into high gear, to unseat Sharon as Likud Party leader and as prime minister.

In a long-anticipated move, Netanyahu announced his candidacy to challenge Sharon this week, just soon after resigning as finance minister, ostensibly to protest the Gaza withdrawal.

"Ariel Sharon has abandoned the Likud's principles and decided to take another route, the leftist route," Netanyahu told reporters and cheering party rebels who had broken with Sharon over the Gaza move. "He is threatening to destroy, with his own hands, the house that he helped build."

If weapons smuggling from Egypt across the Gaza border intensifies — and especially if the Palestinians use smuggled weapons to launch a new wave of terrorism from Gaza — Netanyahu is likely to make major political gains at Sharon's expense.

The Sharon-Netanyahu power struggle could come to a head sooner than expected after a Likud court ruled this week, against Sharon's wishes, that the party's Central Committee will convene in late September to set a date for a leadership primary.

Most political pundits agree that the ruling has set in motion a dynamic that will lead to a split in the Likud, with Sharon leading a moderate wing out of the party rather than losing a leadership race to Netanyahu, who is well ahead in party leadership polls.

Two large questions are at issue between Sharon and Netanyahu over the agreement to allow Egyptian forces to patrol the 8.5-mile Philadelphia route along the Gaza-Egypt border: Will having Egyptians rather than Israelis guard the corridor lead to more or less terrorism? And will the beefed-up Egyptian presence serve as a bridgehead for more Egyptian forces in the Sinai Desert, forces that might eventually threaten Israel?

The argument over the Philadelphia route hints at the coming bitter struggle between Sharon and Netanyahu. Personal and ideological differences between the two men seem irreconcilable, and a torrent of harsh words make it unlikely that they can remain in the same party.

In announcing his challenge this week, Netanyahu declared that Sharon was not worthy to be prime minister, that he had abandoned Likud ideology and that corruption under his rule was rife.

In a pre-emptive 45-minute television interview the night before the challenge, Sharon characterized Netanyahu as a man who flees from responsibility and doesn't have the nerves to lead a country like Israel.

"In any stressful situation, he immediately panics and loses his cool," Sharon said.

Sharon also dropped several hints that he wouldn't stay around to lose to Netanyahu: He will not be Netanyahu's No. 2; the Likud had been infiltrated by far-right elements and is not the same party it had been; and he still had work to do as prime minister, Sharon said.

The Philadelphia route agreement and the Gaza pullout will be high on the agenda of the Sharon-Netanyahu showdown, whether it takes place inside or outside Likud. What happens on the ground in Gaza over the next few months could well decide who Israel's next prime minister will be, and what comes next on the Israeli-Palestinian track.