Ex-Refusenik Quits Israeli Cabinet Over Gaza Pullout

JERUSALEM — Natan Sharansky, the onetime symbol of oppressed Soviet Jewry, quit his Cabinet post Monday to protest Israel’s planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip this summer.

Sharansky, whose views on promoting democracy have won praise from President Bush, said Israel should relinquish Gaza only if the Palestinian government first carries out a wide range of reforms.

In his resignation letter to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Sharansky said that pulling out of the coastal territory without demanding anything in return from the Palestinians “will weaken the chances to build a free Palestinian society and reinforce the terrorist organizations.”

Sharansky had telegraphed his intention to resign well in advance, and his departure from was expected to have little effect on Sharon’s Gaza withdrawal plan.

But the resignation provided yet another rallying point for settlers and their supporters, who still hope to block the uprooting of all 21 Jewish settlements in Gaza and four small ones in the northern West Bank. They are continuing a campaign of protest even though the initiative has cleared all legislative hurdles and is supported by a solid majority of Israelis.

“The struggle against [the withdrawal] will now be reinforced by worthy and uncompromising leadership,” said conservative lawmaker Ehud Yatom of the Likud Party.

Many Israelis have mixed feelings about Sharansky, who has long been a proponent of Jewish settlement-building in the West Bank and Gaza.

The diminutive, stocky 57-year-old, who spent a decade in the gulag before being freed and emigrating to Israel in 1986, is greatly admired here for his defiance of the Soviet government, but he has never won much of a political following.

His main success in public life came when he founded an immigrant-rights party, Yisrael B’Aliyah, in the mid-1990s, which became his springboard to posts in parliament and the Cabinet. But he was seen as doing little to serve his constituency’s interests, instead focusing on right-wing causes.

“He completely failed in leading the Russian immigrant community when he moved so far to the right,” political pollster Hanan Kristal said.

Critics argue that Sharansky’s opposition to the Gaza pullout is driven primarily by his allegiance to the settlement movement rather than by concern for Palestinians’ democratic aspirations.

“The man who was a human rights activist under the Soviet regime has become a champion of the occupation here,” lawmaker Roman Bronfman, of the leftist Yahad Party, told Israel Radio.

At Monday’s meeting of the Israeli Cabinet, Sharansky’s chair was vacant.

Sharansky, who will retain his seat in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, resigned as minister in charge of Jerusalem and diaspora affairs.

Addressing his Cabinet, Sharon delivered carefully chosen words of praise for Sharansky, avoiding any mention of the Gaza pullout and the opposition to it that his departing minister was seeking to marshal. Instead, the prime minister hailed Sharansky’s “exceptional work in dealing with anti-Semitism around the world.”

Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, a Sharon confidant and spokesman, was more effusive in his praise, even while stressing his disagreement with Sharansky over the pullout plan.

“Natan Sharansky is an extraordinary and special figure in both our national life and in international life in general ... a symbol of courage, honesty and heroism,” Olmert said. “But even though I regret the fact that a person like him will not be in the government, I surely do not identify with his reasons.”

Sharansky’s opinions on democratization, centered on the contention that a clear moral division exists between what he calls “free” and “fear” societies, have been warmly received at the White House.

President Bush said he was deeply impressed by the book Sharansky co-wrote last year, “The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror,” even mentioning it in his State of the Union address.

Despite such a high-profile plug, the book’s reception in Israel was lukewarm.

Although many of Sharansky’s views dovetail with Bush’s push for greater democracy in the Arab world, the U.S. administration firmly supports the Gaza withdrawal.

The Israeli and Palestinian governments are trying to keep a lid on violence in the months leading up to the pullout, expected to begin in mid- to late summer, but small-scale fighting has been edging upward in recent weeks.

An Israeli soldier and a Palestinian militant were killed before dawn Monday in a shootout in a West Bank village, Israel’s first military fatality since the two sides declared a truce nearly three months ago.

The slain Palestinian militant was identified as Shafik Abdul Ghani, an Islamic Jihad activist suspected of helping to plan a suicide bombing at a Tel Aviv nightclub in February that killed five Israelis.

In the 3 1/2 months since taking office, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has been trying to rein in widespread corruption in the government he inherited from the late Yasser Arafat.

On Monday, in a strikingly symbolic gesture, Abbas ordered the demolition of three nearly completed villas that senior Palestinian security officials were building on illegally seized public land.

A bulldozer, guarded by Palestinian jeeps and troops, knocked down the opulent homes near the seafront in northern Gaza -- a twist on the Israeli practice, during more than 4 1/2 years of conflict, of demolishing homes belonging to the families of Palestinian militants.

Palestinian officials said the demolitions Monday were meant to show that no one was above the law.

*

Special correspondent Fayed abu Shammalah in Gaza City contributed to this report.