Sharon has been working with a minority government - fewer than 60 members of the 120 seat Knesset -- for the last two months, ever since he fired two cabinet ministers to ensure that his disengagement plan would gain cabinet approval.
Although the Likud has 40 seats in the Knesset and Labor has only 19, Sharon would be forced to make deals in order to bring them into the coalition.
One of the preconditions Labor has set for joining a coalition government is to scrap Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's austerity plan, which has won praise from both the U.S. and the world economic community.
But bringing Labor into the government would enable Sharon to carry out the disengagement plan, which calls for removing settlers and the military from the Gaza Strip as well as from four West Bank settlements.
Despite controversy at home, Sharon's unilateral disengagement plan has the backing of President Bush as well as the other members of the Quartet - the European Union, United Nations and Russia.
Likud's Uzi Landau, who has spearheaded the campaign against the disengagement plan, said he will respect the results of the referendum. Sharon's son Omri, who is also a Likud member, said he believed his father would be obliged to stand by the Likud party convention's decision.
But Sharon's own Likud party already has voted overwhelmingly against the disengagement plan in a party referendum in early May, delivering a stinging defeat to the prime minister.
But despite an earlier pledge to abide by the party decision, Sharon overrode it and put his plan before the Knesset.
Speed up the plan
Meanwhile, Shuvi, a women's movement in favor of the Gaza withdrawal plan, planned to demonstrate on Wednesday evening in front of the auditorium where the Likud convention is being held.
The women are urging Likud members to vote in favor of admitting the Labor party into the government to speed up the implementation of the disengagement plan.
"We grasp how difficult and painful it is to leave the home you built and cared for, yet we owe it to our children, and indeed, the future of the state of Israel depends on that," said Shuvi spokeswoman Dorit Eldar in a statement.
The disengagement plan would move some 7,800 Israelis from their homes in 22 communities in the Gaza Strip as well as a smaller number from four West Bank settlements.
"Any endangerment of our citizens' or soldiers' lives, protecting land that is no longer part of the national consensus, must stop immediately," Eldar added.
Many Israelis have called for an Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, although some question the wisdom of doing so unilaterally. Others say that it is part of the Biblical Land of Israel that God gave the Jewish people as an eternal inheritance.
Several years ago, another woman's movement -- Four Mothers -- was credited with shifting the national consensus and forcing the government to withdraw from a security zone it had maintained in Lebanon for 18 years.
Military men disagree
Although Sharon is a decorated general and known as a brilliant strategist, many military officers here have questioned the wisdom of withdrawing unilaterally from the Gaza Strip at a time when the area continues to be a breeding ground for terrorists.
Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz has backed Sharon's plan and says that it will bring greater security to Israel.
But retired Maj. General Jacob Amidror is one of those who disagrees. He says unilateral withdrawal will reduce Israel's ability to defend itself.
"It will be easier for the Palestinians to use their missiles to hit Sderot [an Israeli city bordering Gaza] and more important than that to hit Ashkelon," Amidror said. "From the minute that the Israeli forces retreat from Gaza, Ashkelon will be under threat from these same missiles and there is no way to stop these missiles but by going back to [Gaza]."
Amidror also said an Israeli retreat would bring terrorists right up to the security fence that has surrounded Gaza for a number of years.
Nevertheless, Amidror said, the worst problem will be that Israel will lose a "historical chance" to show the rest of the world that a democratic nation can succeed in stopping terrorism because it gives the message that if the terrorists hold out long enough, in the end, the other side will retreat.
"It will show the terrorists all around the world from [Hizballah leader Shiekh Hassan] Nasrallah in Lebanon who said the same about our unilateral retreat from Lebanon to the Palestinians in Gaza but also more than hint to other terrorists in the Middle East and around the world, yes, if you are tough enough, if you have the ability to wait and put pressure on [a] democratic system, at the end of the day they give up and this is a historical mistake," he said.
