ARIEL SHARON last night decided to quit Israel’s ruling Likud to lead a new party into a general election that is expected within months, according to sources in his office.

Aides close to the Israeli Prime Minister said that he was likely to announce the move, which has been widely predicted, at a press conference today. Mr Sharon helped to found Likud three decades ago.

Sources added that Mr Sharon, having had lengthy talks with his family as well as political confidants, would go to President Katsav today to request a dissolution of the Knesset.

The split in the Likud party, which comes after days of intense speculation, is likely to cause a dramatic realignment of Israeli politics. Commentators have been referring to it as an “earthquake” not seen since the founding of the state more than half a century ago.

The 77-year-old retired general — known affectionately as “The Bulldozer” — decided to abandon his right-wing party in order to attempt to boost peacemaking efforts, according to his advisers.

Word of the move came hours after Israel’s Labour Party, under the new leadership of the trade unionist Amir Peretz, voted to pull out of the governing coalition, paving the way for an election in February or March, well ahead of the scheduled November poll.

Mr Sharon, who doggedly pressed ahead with his plan to withdraw from Gaza and four isolated Jewish settlements in the West Bank despite fierce opposition from within his own Likud ranks, is now likely to seek alliances with Israel’s more centrist political leaders.

Despite his departure, Mr Sharon, the most popular politician in Israel, will be operating from a position of strength in the country where more than two thirds of people supported the Gaza pullout.

The shattering of the Likud party will inevitably see a number of senior departures including that of Ehud Olmert, the Deputy Prime Minister and long-time ally of Mr Sharon.

It will leave the ground clear for Mr Sharon’s implacable foe, Binyamin Netanyahu, the former Prime Minister, who resigned as Finance Minister on the eve to the Gaza evacuation in protest against the decision.

The Likud Party is almost certain to lurch to the right, opposing any further concessions to the Palestinians.

But polls over the weekend in the Israeli media appeared to show the strength of Mr Sharon’s position despite his having been left with little choice but to desert the party that has caused him so much grief in the past 18 months.

Had he chosen to attempt to lead the party into the coming election, an opinion poll in the Israeli daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth suggested that Likud could have won 38 of the Knesset’s 120 seats, down only two on its present tally, compared with Labour’s 28.

The same poll says that at the head of a new grouping — whose formalities were already registered over the weekend — Mr Sharon could command 28 seats. That would tie it with Mr Peretz’s Labour Party and give Mr Sharon the opportunity to form a new coalition government. Likud under Mr Netanyahu would garner only 18 seats.

Yesterday Mr Sharon began consultations with political allies in Labour and the centrist Shinui Party, once a member of the governing coalition, hinting at the new landscape the Prime Minister will try to map out in the coming weeks.

THREE DECADES OF LIKUD

• Likud (Cohesion) formed in 1973 as a coalition of right-leaning factions
• Ariel Sharon joined Likud in 1973. Led by Menachem Begin, the party won the 1977 election
• Begin helped initiate the peace process with Egypt
• Yitzhak Shamir elected in 1983 as second Likud Prime Minister
• Sharon became Israel’s 11th Prime Minister in 2001

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