Sharon Party's Hard Line Unlikely to Convince Him
Mr. Sharon has already set such strict conditions for a Palestinian state that the vote makes no practical difference, they said.

Instead, it represents a deep political struggle within Likud between Mr. Sharon and the man who wants to succeed him, former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has staked out a position to the right of Mr. Sharon during this period of great popular anxiety.

The standoff amounts to a role reversal: when Mr. Netanyahu was Prime Minister in the late 1990's, Mr. Sharon, also seeking to build popularity, staked out a position to the right of him.

"It's not a dramatic change or dramatically significant," said Yuval Steinitz, a Likud member of Parliament and a firm Netanyahu supporter. "It's a general instruction for the prime minister and Likud politicians, and it expresses the great frustration within the party and the Israeli public in general with the sucide bombings and the involvement of the Palestinian Authority in terror despite all their previous agreements."

Haim Ramon, a Labor Party politician who wants to lead his own party into the next election, agrees.

"It's not going to have any impact on the government," he said. "What Sharon is talking about is very virtual, and his conditions for a Palestinian state are so stiff he won't have to implement it — not a chance."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/14/international/middleeast/14LIKU.html