Israeli political heavyweight Benjamin Netanyahu launched his campaign to oust bitter rival Ariel Sharon as prime minister with a call Wednesday for construction of a huge number of new settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Staking out the battleground for the right-wing power struggle triggered by Sharon's removal of settlers from Gaza, Netanyahu urged immediate building on a particularly sensitive area outside East Jerusalem.

"The time has come to build here and I will build here," Netanyahu told reporters on a tour of the rocky hillside between Jerusalem and Maale Adumim, the biggest West Bank settlement.

Sharon himself says Israel plans construction in the so-called E1 tract despite heavy US criticism and fury from the Palestinians, who are concerned they would be cut off from the holy city they seek as the capital of an eventual state.

The plans call for construction of 1,000 housing units and later, a tunnel to divert Palestinian traffic from the area, said Yehoshua Mor-Yosef, a project spokesman.

Israel has yet to approve any building at the site, but recently approved construction of a police station there.

Netanyahu declared his challenge to Sharon for leadership of their ruling Likud Party on Tuesday, a step that could lead to elections earlier than the due date of November 2006 and is likely to keep any peacemaking with the Palestinians on hold.

Netanyahu, a 55-year-old former premier who resigned as Sharon's finance minister over the Gaza plan, is the darling of rightists opposed to yielding any settlements in Israeli-occupied territory that Palestinians want for a state.

They fear it sets a precedent for giving up homes on land to which settlers say they have a Biblical claim and that it rewards a Palestinian uprising begun in 2000.

The World Court has ruled all the settlements illegal. Israel disputes this and the United States has said Israel could expect to keep some West Bank land under a peace settlement that leads to Palestinian statehood.

Likud polls show Netanyahu would rout Sharon in a primary if it were held soon, but Sharon has far greater national popularity stirring speculation that he could break away to form a new centrist party.

A poll in the mass-circulation Yedioth Ahronoth daily said 54 per cent of Israelis preferred Sharon as prime minister while only 26 per cent wanted Netanyahu.

Sharon, 77, once godfather of the settler movement, has vowed Israel will never give up its biggest West Bank settlement blocs, but that some isolated enclaves could go under an eventual peace deal with the Palestinians.

In another development, Israel's parliament Wednesday approved posting 750 Egyptian troops on the Egypt-Gaza border, allowing Israeli soldiers to withdraw from the sensitive frontier. The vote was 53 to 28.

During more than four years of Palestinian-Israeli violence, Israeli forces have uncovered and destroyed dozens of tunnels used by Palestinians to smuggle weapons into Gaza under the border. With the agreement, Egypt takes over responsibility for preventing smuggling, and Israel is expected to withdraw its forces by the end of the year.

Source: China Daily