Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon plans to scrap the internationally-backed roadmap peace plan with the Palestinians and seek Washington`s blessing for annexing occupied West Bank land, an Israeli daily reported on Monday, January 2. Sharon, who is running for re-election in March under his new Kadima party, would argue that Israel was justified in abandoning the peace plan and unilaterally setting borders because of the Palestinians` failure to crack down on resistance factions, said Maariv. The report said Sharon would go public with his new plan after Palestinian parliamentary elections, scheduled for January 25. The daily said Israeli officials had already presented the idea to counterparts in President George W. Bush`s administration. ”(They) explained to the Americans that since there is no real chance of any achievement in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, the natural partner for this matter is Washington, the Middle East`s superpower-broker,” Maariv said. A de facto truce observed by Palestinian resistance factions since President Mahmoud Abbas was elected in January expired with the start of the new year. The truce has been undermined by Israel`s official resumption of its assassinations policy, prompting resistance factions to announce they were no longer bound by a period of calm they followed through most of 2005. Maariv said that even before the March 28 general election, Sharon would propose evacuating dozens of West Bank settlements, allowing for the creation of a temporary Palestinian state on a single stretch of land in that territory and in the Gaza Strip. In exchange, it said, Israel wants Bush to endorse its annexation of other West Bank areas as well as parts of Al-Quds [occupied East Jerusalem]. Israel captured and then annexed Al-Quds after the 1967 war but the international community still regards the holy city, home to nearly 200,000 Palestinians, as an occupied territory. Al-Quds is home of Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam third holiest shrine, and represents the heart of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Bush has supported Sharon`s Gaza unilateral pullout as a potential spur for peace but has angered Palestinians by announcing that Israel could expect to keep some West Bank land under any final accord. Israel also wants US backing for its demand that Palestinian refugees be allowed to settle in the eventual Palestinian state but never in what is now Israel. Palestinians have repeatedly vocalized fears that Sharon devised the Gaza withdrawal plan as a ruse to cement Israel`s hold on most of the occupied West Bank, where 246,000 settlers live among 2.4 million Palestinians. Sharon has made no secret of his intention to entrench Israeli control over parts of the occupied West Bank, especially on the outskirts of Al-Quds, in exchange for the Gaza withdrawal.