Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon failed on Monday to persuade his security cabinet to speed up a Gaza withdrawal agreed in principle by the government two months ago, political sources said.
In a sign of internal political opposition Sharon faces over his plan to pull Israeli settlers and soldiers out of Gaza by the end of 2005, hard-liners in the security cabinet resisted his call to evacuate them in one fell swoop, the sources said.
The government decided in June that a Gaza pullout would be made in four stages, with separate cabinet votes required at each phase before settlements are removed.
But Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz, with Sharon's backing, has been pushing to evacuate settlements all at once to reduce the prospect of prolonged clashes between Israeli security forces and Palestinians, as well as with any settlers who refuse to go.
Sharon wants to evacuate 8,000 settlers next year from 21 enclaves in tiny Gaza, where 1.3 million Palestinians also live.
His blueprint also entails keeping Israeli control over an arc of larger settlements in the West Bank that he considers a strategic bulwark of the Jewish state.
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