Israel's Ariel Sharon has jumped to a commanding lead over Benjamin Netanyahu in a Likud leadership race after winning a party vote that had threatened to unseat him, polls showed today.
The prime minister received a boost from the Likud central committee's rejection on Monday of Mr Netanyahu's bid to bring forward a party leadership election to oust him in protest at Israel's evacuation of settlers and soldiers from Gaza.
The decisive ballot by the rightist party's rank-and-file is now scheduled for April ahead of a general election that must be held by November 2006.
The turnaround in Mr Sharon's political fortunes reduces the possibility that he might abandon the party he co-founded in the 1970s to create a new centrist bloc tapping into broad public support behind the Gaza pullout earlier this month.
A poll of Likud members published today in the Haaretznewspaper showed Mr Sharon with 47.6 per cent support to Mr Netanyahu's 33.8 per cent, a reversal from three weeks ago when the premier trailed his opponent by six percentage points.
A survey in the Maarivnewspaper had Mr Sharon ahead of Mr Netanyahu 50 per cent to 36 per cent.
Anger within the traditionally pro-settler Likud may have given Mr Netanyahu a temporary advantage in earlier polls conducted while the Gaza pullout was in progress.
But Mr Sharon's tough response to recent rocket fire from Gaza, including Israel's assassination of an Islamic Jihad leader, helped deflate accusations from Mr Netanyahu supporters that he had gone soft, and may have given him a lift in the latest polls.
His comeback also may have been aided by accolades he won earlier this month at a UN summit, where the Gaza pullout was praised as a possible catalyst for renewed Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking.