TEL AVIV - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon vowed Thursday to press ahead with a promised pullout from the Gaza Strip, despite calls from his own party for a referendum and a new blow to the fragile peace process from a bomb blast in the West Bank.
Sharon, who has received death threats from Israeli hardliners who had long regarded him as a champion of Jewish settlement of the occupied territories, insisted he would ignore calls for the pullout to be put to a referendum.
"Government and parliament have made difficult decisions. They will happen," he told the central committee of his right-wing Likud party, moments before members voted by a show of hands for a plebiscite on the pullout.
Sharon has flatly refused to hold a referendum on the withdrawal, scheduled to begin in July, and urged central committee members not to back the non-binding resolution.
"I have never bowed to threats and I won't do so today," he said.
The premier promised that settlement activity would continue in key parts of the West Bank, including east Jerusalem, despite the Gaza pullout.
"Thanks to settlement, we will forever keep our big positions, essential to our existence," he said, listing them as Jerusalem, "settlement blocs in the most sacred places of our history" and "main security zones for our defence".
Both Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom and Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appealed for a referendum in order to shore up national unity.
"You are talking about tearing children from their homes... I want to stress the only way to carry out such a dramatic and difficult process is to turn directly to the public and let them decide," said Netanyahu, a longstanding rival of the prime minister.
But less than a third of the 3,000 members of the Likud central committee turned out for the key vote on a referendum.
Lacking a parliamentary majority, Likud needs the backing of the 11 MPs of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party if it is to have any chance of pushing through a bill requiring a plebiscite on a withdrawal.
As it is, Shas has rejected the idea, fearing it could create a precedent for of a referendums to be held on other divisive issues such as the relationship between the Israeli state and Judaism.
Thirteen rebel Likud MPs opposed to the disengagement plan have threatened to vote against the government's 2005 budget unless a referendum is held.
Sharon must guide the budget through parliament before the end of March otherwise his government will collapse, jeopardising the Gaza evacuation and forcing early elections.
The political prospects of halting the pullout all but dried up last month when the cabinet approved the plan and parliament ratified legislation to compensate the thousands of settlers to be displaced from their homes.
Sharon's disengagement plan, coupled with the emergence of a moderate Palestinian leadership since the death of Yasser Arafat last November, has done much to renew hopes of kickstarting the peace process.
Mahmud Abbas is due to hold talks with US President George W. Bush at the end of the month, in the first visit to the White House by a president of the Palestinian Authority since Bush took office in January 2001.
On Thursday, he asked for Egyptian help in reviving talks with Israel during a summit with President Hosni Mubarak in the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
Yet clashes continued to test a ceasefire declared by Israel and the Palestinian Authority at a Middle East summit last month.
Palestinian militants blew up a vehicle booby-trapped with explosives in the northern West Bank city of Nablus.
No one was wounded in the blast not far from Joseph's Tomb, a shrine where more than 200 Jewish settlers were praying before dawn.
Overnight, Israeli troops arrested seven militants from Islamic Jihad in clashes with Palestinian gunmen in the northern West Bank town of Jenin.
"The Palestinians need time. They just formed their government barely two weeks ago and meanwhile there was the London conference on Palestinian reform," said Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres, urging Israel to be patient.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority announced that it would resume executions of death-row prisoners for the first time since August 2002.

03/03/2005 18:32 GMT