Sharon's challenge

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In the wake of the overwhelming rejection of his Gaza-West Bank disengagement proposal by Likud voters, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is not giving up. The Israeli leader vows to forge ahead with a modified version of his plan to unilaterally withdraw from some of the settlements he had proposed to leave in the referendum. As Mr. Sharon moves forward with this politically courageous step, he will deserve and most likely receive the strong support of President Bush. The two leaders are likely to discuss the matter when Mr. Sharon travels to Washington several weeks from now.

We remain convinced that the strategic rationale behind Mr. Sharon's approach is sound. There are just 7,300 Israeli settlers living in Gaza today, where they are surrounded by more than 1.3 million hostile Palestinians. There is no realistic chance that Israeli settlements will be able to remain in Gaza if Israelis and Palestinians reach a peace agreement. The resources that Israel spends to protect the outlying Gaza and West Bank settlements Mr. Sharon has proposed to evacuate could be better spent on winning the war against the terrorist organizations operating out of Gaza and the West Bank.

As he prepares to meet with Mr. Bush, the Israeli leader faces a difficult challenge: crafting a new disengagement plan in which Israel withdraws from a smaller number of settlements (thus mollifying some on his right) without alienating Washington by limiting the scope of an Israeli pullback. When Mr. Sharon visited Mr. Bush at the White House last month, he won U.S. support for his positions that Israel would be able to retain some West Bank settlements in a peace agreement and that the Palestinians would not be granted the "right of return" to Israel. Mr. Sharon counts his excellent relationship with Mr. Bush among his foremost achievements as prime minister. He does not want to run the risk of jeopardizing it by holding on to settlements that serve no vital security purpose.

An unnamed State Department official quoted yesterday by The Washington Post complained that the United States would "get hammered" following the referendum defeat and would have to show that "we weren't played by Sharon." But Secretary of State Colin Powell later praised Mr. Sharon, noting that his push for the settlement pullout was unprecedented for an Israeli prime minister.

The prime minister is actually in a stronger political position than imagined vis-a-vis his critics among the settlers. For one thing, public opinion polls suggest that close to two-thirds of the Israeli electorate as a whole favor his disengagement plan. But even among Likud voters, Mr. Sharon retains a surprising degree of support. In the referendum proposal defeated Sunday, some 59,000 Likud Party members voted against Mr. Sharon. But, by way of comparison, 1 million Israelis voted for Likud in the last election. According to a poll published yesterday in the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot, 55 percent of Likud voters -- roughly 550,000 people -- favor the prime minister's disengagement plan.

In short, Mr. Sharon's disengagement concept remains very much alive. Mr. Bush should continue to support the Israeli leader as he attempts to win a popular mandate for his forthcoming plan at home.