ARIEL SHARON may pull off his coup. At 77, more than 30 years after he helped to found Likud, he may manage to form a new party to command the centre ground of Israeli politics.

It is not a reckless move. The alternative was retirement. He had just about reached the end of the road with Likud, given the implacable opposition of its far Right to his decision to take Israel out of Gaza.

He is right, too, that the popularity of the Gaza withdrawal suggested an appetite for more moderation than Likud offered.

But the question is what he intends to do with this power, if he wins it, and what his move means for the peace process.

He went out of his way yesterday to deny the most obvious speculation: that he may do on the West Bank what he so successfully did in Gaza, and act unilaterally, if talks with the Palestinians fail.

Sharon told the core members of his new party that he did not envision unilateral withdrawal in the West Bank, according to Israeli radio. He would stick to the “road map”, he said, referring to the US-backed peace process for parallel concessions by each side, which has been stalled for several years.

Earlier, he had said that he would be prepared to make “painful concessions” for peace. That was taken as a hint about pullouts on the West Bank — far easier if he were free of the constraints of Likud’s far Right.

Haaretz newspaper reported that in a third term, Sharon would seek to evacuate isolated West Bank settlements, while keeping the main ones, and to clinch this with a peace treaty with the Palestinians.

All the same, the suspicion will remain that he will hold the notion of unilateral action in reserve. He has refused to talk to the Palestinian Authority until it disarms militants. But the Islamic militant group Hamas, which is posing a strong threat to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, is expected to do well in parliamentary elections on January 25.

Palestinians fear that if talks do not resume, Sharon will set the border on the line of the barrier Israel is building within the West Bank. Israel say it keeps out suicide bombers; Palestinians say it is a land grab, which will render their communities unviable.

The US is pressing both sides for a return to the road map. A senior Administration official said yesterday in London that the priority was to make Gaza work well. Beyond that, “we would like more Palestinian action on terrorism, and the removal of Israeli outposts [on the West Bank] now”, he said. The US is wary that electoral success for Hamas would jeopardise the road map. But “we do not favour a postponement, as it would disappoint many Palestinians”, the official said.

The US would look coolly on unilateral moves by Sharon, he added. “It’s not what we want to see. It would be an awful lot better if negotiations resumed.”

But he argued that even if actions were begun by one side, they could not be completed without talks. “Gaza was unilateral to start with, but there were a lot of meetings on the ground to make it possible. The West Bank would be [even] harder to do unilaterally.”

This counts as a measured response from the US: not encouragement, but not sharp condemnation either. His move will succeed if he has accurately discerned the middle ground of Israeli opinion. In the same way, he seems to be probing US tolerance, looking for a deal that might be acceptable, even if not quite what Washington would have scripted.

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