JERUSALEM (AFP) - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon shrugged off a mass protest against his Gaza pullout plan by preparing to unveil compensation details for settlers due to be uprooted from the territory next year.
Tens of thousands of settlers and their supporters took to the streets of central Jerusalem late Sunday to denounce the premier as a "dictator" over his determination to forge ahead with his controversial disengagement plan.
However a close aide to Sharon said the prime minister would not be cowed by outbursts from his one-time allies and would present legislation on compensation to the settlers to his security cabinet as planned on Tuesday.
"The prime minister is determined to go on with his plan according to the timetable he has fixed and nobody will prevent him from doing that," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
"Tomorrow he will present, as scheduled, the legislation to be voted by the security cabinet which will include advance compensation for the settlers."
Sharon said last month that he expected his full cabinet to vote on a final version of the plan on October 24 before parliament has its say on November 3.
Sharon`s growing frustration with extremist opponents of his plan, which also envisages the tightening of control over larger West Bank settlement blocs, boiled over on Sunday when he accused them of trying to stir up "a civil war" and intimidating the army which will overesee next year`s pullout.
He had been particularly angered by a petition by 200 leading right-wingers last week which described the pullout of the 8,000 settlers from Gaza and four small Jewish enclaves in the northern West Bank as "crimes against humanity."
Although a charter for opponents of the withdrawal distributed at the rally explictly ruled out "inciting civil war", it also demanded loyalty to the cause of Israeli ownership of the occupied territories "to the very end".
Bentzi Lieberman, leader of the Yesha settlers council which organised the rally, derided the proposal for compensation.
"They are going to make a historical decision here. Israeli society could be torn because of this issue," he told army radio.
"The question of evacuation is not a question of humanitarian or economic policy, but the fabric of life of a nation that returned after 2,000 years of exile."
The divorce between Sharon and the settlers could be finalised later in the day when the National Religious Party (NRP), the last remaining representative of the far right in government, was set to decide whether to bolt from the coalition in protest at the planned pullout from Gaza.
Members of the party`s central committee were to meet in Tel Aviv to discuss a motion drafted by their leader Effi Eitam who wants the NRP to quit as soon as the government approves advance compensation payments to settlers.
Eitam quit as housing minister back in June after the so-called disengagement plan won ministerial approval but his party colleague Zevulun Orlev has remained in the cabinet as welfare minister.
While the party as a whole is fiercely opposed to the withdrawal, some members such as Orlev believe it is better off trying to block the project inside government and is pushing for the whole plan to be voted on in a national referendum.
The NRP, which has six MPs in the 120-seat Israeli parliament, has long been seen as the main party of the settler movement.
The departure of Eitam and two other ministers from another far right faction deprived Sharon of a parliamentary majority, leaving the premier scrambling to stitch together a new coalition.