TEL AVIV, Israel, May 27 (UPI) -- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is to give his Cabinet a new plan Thursday for a unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the northern West Bank.
The ministers are to vote on that plan Sunday, but Sharon is not assured of a majority.
The Haaretz newspaper said that 11 ministers support the plan, nine are against it and three are wavering.
Minister Avigdor Liberman, of the hawkish National Union, told Israel Radio he was confident a majority in the Cabinet opposed the plan. More than half the members of the Likud Party's Central Committee, Sharon's party, have signed a petition opposing the new plan. On May 2 a decisive majority of Likud members quashed the original program.
The new plan is believed to be only slightly different from Sharon's original idea. It reportedly proposes that the Gaza Strip and four northern West Bank settlements be divided into four groups. A separate, specific, Cabinet decision will be needed before each group of settlements is removed. The first are four isolated settlements in the Gaza Strip, then four in the northern West Bank, followed by the Gush Katif settlement bloc, and finally three settlements in the northern Gaza Strip.
The disengagement is to be carried out by the end of 2005, but the Cabinet decision will not set specific dates, the Haaretz newspaper's Web site said.
