JERUSALEM (AFP) - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was stepping up his efforts to stitch together a new governing coalition after his Gaza pullout plan suffered an embarrassing reverse in parliament.
MPs voted 53 to 44 late Monday against the prime minister's speech at the beginnning of the winter parliamentary session, which was largely centered on his so-called disengagement plan, after it was opposed by several members of Sharon's own Likud party and by the main opposition Labour party.
While the vote was largely symbolic, it served to underline how Sharon has little option but to bring Labour into government if he wants a majority for his pullout plan when it is put to a formal vote in parliament in two weeks' time.
Labour has given its qualified backing for the disengagement plan, which will see all 8,000 Jewish residents of Gaza uprooted from their homes next year, but deputy premier Ehud Olmert said it was now time for the party to come off the fence.
"There is no doubt that the Labour party is the priority for the enlargement of the coalition but what we need to know is whether they really want to take part in crucial decisions in power," Olmert told public radio Tuesday.
Sharon lost his overall majority in June when some traditional allies baulked at the pullout plan. A number of MPs from his own Likud party even voted against the premier on Monday, furious that Sharon is still pushing on with a project that was rejected in a party referendum in May.
Olmert, Sharon's closest ally in government, said the current political instability was "dangerous", as he attacked right-wing Likud opponents of Sharon for risking "the collapse of Likud and the fall of the govenrment."
The head of the Labour faction in parliament, Dalia Itzik, said her party "believes that it is right to leave Gaza, as do the majority of the country.
"We are ready to provide the prime minister a safety net in parliament for anything to do with the disengagement but it will not be a wideranging net as we want to block everything else," she added.
Reports on Tuesday said that Itzik and another senior Labour deputy, former defense minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, were expected to hold talks with Sharon over the next few days.
Sharon held a series of meetings with overall Labour leader Shimon Peres about joining the coalition earlier in the summer but they failed to come to any firm understanding.
The situation has been further complicated after Likud's central committee voted against Labour joining the government, although Sharon has made clear that he will not be bound by that verdict.
Another possible scenario for Sharon could see him bring the ultra-Orthodox Shas party into government.
Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz held talks Tuesday with Shas's spiritual leader, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, in a bid to persuade him to reverse his previous opposition to the pullout.
However, Shas's entry into government could only serve to trigger the departure of its arch enemy, the secular Shinui party, which is the second largest party in the current coalition.
If he cannot put together a new coalition, Sharon may feel he has little option but to either call snap elections or even hold a nationwide referendum on the disegnagment plan -- an idea he has previously rejected on the grounds that there is simply no time for such a ballot.
Opponents of the Gaza pullout have argued that it will serve victory on a plate to radical Palestinian factions such as Hamas which have been waging war against the Israelis from their Gaza stronghold.
A massive operation in northern Gaza, which is designed to put a halt to rockets attacks on southern Israel by Hamas, entered its third week on Tuesday, having already left more than 110 people dead and scenes of utter devastation in the territory's largest refugee camp.
Much of the violence has been centered around the Jabilya refugeee camp where sporadic gunfire from Israeli tanks sent the Palestinian population ducking for shelter on Tuesday.
Israeli army bulldozers continued to level citrus groves and houses in the northern sector of the camp, an AFP correspondent reported.
Senior officers have reportedly told Sharon that Operation Days of Penitence, which is the army's deadliest offensive in the territory, had now met its main objective.
But Sharon, keen to deliver a decisive blow to Gaza-based militant factions before next year's planned pullout, told top brass that they must push on with the operation.