Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon moved closer to solid Cabinet support for his Gaza pullout plan on Tuesday when a secular party that backs the withdrawal agreed to serve together with an ultra-Orthodox Jewish faction to boost his shaky ruling coalition.
In the Gaza Strip, a roadside bomb planted by Palestinian militants and meant for an Israeli bulldozer operating in the Rafah refugee camp took three Palestinian lives instead.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Also, in a video that seemed modeled on taped warnings issued by the al-Qaeda terrorist network, the violent Islamic Hamas threatened to bombard an Israeli town with rockets.
Sharon lost his parliamentary majority over his plan to pull all Israeli settlers and soldiers out of Gaza and remove four small West Bank enclaves, a stark turnaround for a politician who spent decades boosting expansion of Jewish settlements.
Several Cabinet ministers from Sharon's Likud Party oppose the Gaza plan, further endangering his hold on power.
Trying to prop up his government, Sharon has been negotiating with the moderate opposition Labor Party and the small ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism (UTJ) faction.
That created problems for Shinui, Sharon's main current partner. Shinui ran on a platform of opposing the ultra-Orthodox factions, pledging to keep them out of the Cabinet.
Shinui was created for the 2001 elections on a one-issue platform of reducing special privileges enjoyed by ultra-Orthodox Jews, such as exemption from military service and extra state funding for schools and seminaries.
Now Shinui has softened its stand, saying that it's prepared to serve with UTJ under certain conditions, as long as Labor is brought in to the coalition and the larger ultra-Orthodox party, Shas, is left out.
However, Israeli media reported that Sharon rejected Shinui's conditions. Negotiations are expected to continue.
Shinui's abrupt change made it a target for Israeli pundits.
"They folded," screamed a huge front page headline in the Yediot Ahronot daily. "Lapid's lost virginity" was the title of a commentary in the Haaretz daily, referring to Shinui leader Joseph Lapid.
"There are times in life when you must understand the requirements of the moment," said Lapid, explaining his reversal.
No guarantee
UTJ officials said they were not opposed to joining a coalition with Shinui, but their final agreement was not guaranteed.
An alliance of Likud, Labor, Shinui and UTJ would have the support of 79 seats in the 120-member parliament -- reducing the leverage of the Likud rebels.
Labor negotiators say they are close to agreement with Likud over the Gaza pullout plan, but gaps remain over other domestic issues.
A Likud-Shinui-UTJ or Likud-Labor-UTJ team would command a small majority but would be vulnerable to defections by Likud rebels.
In Gaza, meanwhile, Palestinian militants tried to blow up an armored Israeli bulldozer with a roadside bomb, but the device sent shrapnel flying hundreds of meters and killed three Palestinians instead. At least 10 other people were wounded. No Israelis were hurt.
Tunnels
The Israeli army was operating in the area near the Egyptian border to uncover tunnels used to smuggle arms into the Gaza Strip.
Hamas said two of the casualties in Rafah were its members, and the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades claimed one of the dead men. Witnesses said they were not among the militants who planted the bomb.
TV footage showed masked militants putting a detonator in an alley near the road moments before the explosion.
The bomb was one of at least four directed overnight against Israeli troops in the area, known as a flashpoint in the nearly four years of Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the army said.
The Hamas video, aired on Tuesday on the al-Arabiya satellite TV channel, showed three masked men surrounded by weapons. One of the men read a statement threatening to rain rockets from the Gaza Strip on the Israeli town of Sderot.
Many of the residents have left Sderot in recent weeks, and those who have stayed say they live in constant fear of attacks. Although highly unreliable, the rockets killed two people there in June, and a rocket scored a direct hit on a house on Monday.
"We have decided to send you Qassam rockets to every place you think is safe," said the man.
"We will launch rockets from among your tanks and your soldiers and in front of your planes. We have prepared for you rockets that can reach wherever we want," he said.
Hamas has previously released prerecorded videos by its suicide bombers, but this was the first time it has shown an al-Qaeda-style political message with a specific threat.
Also on Tuesday, an Israeli lawmaker said his classified parliamentary report cited dozens of security lapses at sensitive installations in Israel, including the country's international airport and one of its largest military bases.
Ephraim Sneh said the report examined more than 60 strategic sites in Israel and found many of them to be vulnerable to attack.
In almost four years of Israeli-Palestinian violence, Palestinian attackers are known to have struck only twice at strategic sites: an unsuccessful bombing attempt at a large fuel depot north of Tel Aviv in March 2002, and a double suicide bombing at the port of Ashdod earlier this year, killing 10 Israelis.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion