Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, unmoved by tens of thousands of people rallying against his Gaza pullout plan, faced a vote yesterday by a traditional political ally over whether to desert his minority government.

A decision by the pro-settler National Religious Party (NRP) to quit Sharon’s governing coalition would further weaken the right-wing Likud leader in parliament but appeared unlikely to topple him in the short-term.

“Supporters of disengagement apparently have a majority in the Knesset,” Social Affairs Minister Zevulun Orlev of the NRP conceded on Army Radio, using Sharon’s term for pulling soldiers and settlers out of Gaza, home to 1.3 million Palestinians.

Orlev remained in the cabinet after his two NRP ministerial colleagues quit in June in protest at the government’s approval in principle of Sharon’s withdrawal plan. The NRP’s Central Committee was to vote later in the day on making a final break and the timing for such a move. The party’s leader, former minister Effi Eitam, has urged an immediate pullout from the government.

Sharon currently controls 59 of parliament’s 120 seats and would lose four more legislators if the NRP ends the partnership. But he has enjoyed a safety net provided by the main opposition Labour Party, which backs a Gaza withdrawal.

<B>“Dictator” </B>

In a show of strength on Sunday, tens of thousands of opponents of the plan to remove all 21 Jewish settlements in Gaza and four of some 120 in the West Bank by the end of 2005 rallied in Jerusalem’s central Zion Square.

“The Sharon government is a government of destruction,” many of the placards read. Some of the signs called Sharon, who was once the champion of the movement to settle captured land and still wants to keep the main Jewish enclaves in the West Bank, a dictator.

Hardliners have urged security forces to disobey orders to remove settlements. Some settlers even propose violent resistance, drawing accusations from Sharon that they are trying to incite civil war.

Speaking at a rally of his right-wing Likud party, Sharon emphasised he had no intention of turning back from the pullout plan despite the opposition.

Security has been tightened around Sharon, 76. An assassin killed Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 in an attempt to scupper interim peace accords signed with the Palestinians.

“He is not alone,” Sharon’s deputy, Ehud Olmert, told Army Radio. “No one should delude himself for a moment – the people of Israel are with the prime minister.”

Opinion polls show a majority of Israelis support the plan to quit Gaza, where 8,000 Jews live in hard to defend settlements.

Sharon’s inner cabinet was due to discuss on Tuesday legislation for carrying out the withdrawal plan, including the payment of compensation to settlers.

<B>Jeffrey Heller</B>