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TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) -- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Thursday he planned to replace his minority government with a broad coalition to push through his Gaza withdrawal plan and promised not to launch attacks on Palestinians unless provoked during the Palestinians' election campaign. Sharon's governing coalition has disintegrated in recent days after the premier fired the moderate Shinui Party for voting against the budget, leaving him with only 40 seats in the 120-member Knesset. If Sharon cannot patch together a new coalition, he will be forced to call early elections, endangering his plans to pull out of Gaza next year. Sharon said he will court the opposition Labor Party and ultra-Orthodox parties. "We are standing before fateful decisions, and it's important that there be a broad and stable coalition," Sharon told a gathering of Israeli journalists. He reiterated his intention to carry out his "disengagement" plan, under which Israel would withdraw from the Gaza Strip and four small West Bank settlements next year. Meanwhile, the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad called a boycott of Palestinian elections set for Jan. 9 - joining the largest Islamic group, Hamas, in urging its followers not to vote. "The Palestinian people who are living under occupation want to have a real election, a free and fair election in a free, liberated land. We cannot say the upcoming presidential election is like this," Mohammed al Hindi, the Gaza leader of Islamic Jihad, told reporters. Hamas has promised to abide by the election's result, but if many of it and Jihad's tens of thousands of followers boycott, it could undercut the vote's legitimacy. Palestinian election officials announced Thursday that 10 candidates qualified to run in the election, which will pick a successor to the late Yasser Arafat as head of Palestinian Authority. It will be the Palestinians' first election since 1996. The candidates included Mahmoud Abbas - the interim leader who is considered the front-runner - jailed uprising leader Marwan Barghouti and democracy advocate Mustafa Barghouti. The two Barghoutis are distant relatives. Sharon said Marwan Barghouti would remain in jail, where he is serving five life sentences on a series of murder convictions, despite his candidacy. "He can (campaign) according to the conditions in the prison in which he sits," Sharon said. The official campaign will start 14 days before the election and end 24 hours before the polls open, said Rami Hamdallah, chairman of the Palestinian election committee. About 71 percent of qualified Palestinians, or 1.3 million people, have registered to vote, he said. Abbas appealed to all Palestinians to cast ballots. "Our people should participate and share in all the institutions and decisions regarding the future," he said. "We must have a strong capable authority to provide security and stability to our people and to bring our people out." Israel has said it planned to ease conditions in the West Bank and Gaza so as not to interfere with the campaigns and the voting. Since Arafat's death Nov. 11, the level of violence between the two sides has decreased markedly. Sharon said Israel won't attack Palestinians if things remain calm, but the military will act if it has information of an imminent attack and will respond if Palestinians fire rockets at Israel. "If there is quiet, we of course will not act," Sharon said. On Wednesday, Abbas called for renewed peace talks and said the two sides would meet after the election to discuss the stalled "road map" peace plan, which calls for the establishment of an independent state next year. Sharon said that contacts between the two sides are already happening, and he hoped to renew high-level talks after the election. As a condition for those talks, Sharon has demanded Palestinian leaders crack down on anti-Israel bias, or "incitement," in the Palestinian media, a condition they appeared to be meeting, he said. Earlier this week, Palestinian officials confirmed that Abbas has ordered state-run television and radio to halt hateful programming. Sharon, who said he would be willing to "make painful concessions for true peace," reiterated his demand that Palestinians crack down on militant groups. "On the subject of terror, Israel will not make any compromises," he said. "In regards to the security of Israel, there will not be any compromises. I hope the new leadership will act in this regard so it will be possible to progress." Sharon also said he was willing to meet Syrian President Bashar Assad, but repeated his demands that Damascus first clamp down on Palestinian militant groups working in Syria. Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which have killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide bombings, have headquarters in Damascus. "Would I be willing to meet Assad? Under certain conditions, yes," Sharon said. "I wouldn't recommend that Israel open negotiations with the Syrians when all the terror groups are operating there." Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa accused Sharon of imposing preconditions on Syria for the restart of talks. "That's unacceptable," he said in Damascus. © 2004 The
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