Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has narrowly survived a challenge to his leadership of the governing Likud Party, but his troubles weren't over yesterday as opponents of his Gaza Strip pullout vowed to continue their campaign to oust him and quash his peace efforts.
The Israeli military, meanwhile, continued its offensive against Palestinian militants, with air strikes in Gaza and large-scale arrests in the West Bank. Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said Israel would continue its pinpoint killings of militants, and said a militant leader's call for a halt to rocket attacks against Israel was inadequate.
Hamas said the arrests were motivated by a desire to weaken the group ahead of Palestinian national elections.
PHOTO: AFP
Sharon's 104-vote margin in the vote on Monday by the 3,000-member Likud central committee was a slap in the face of party hardliners who wanted to punish him for the Gaza pullout. The man who led the challenge, former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said committee members caved in to the pressure of a "tyrant," without mentioning Sharon by name.
The ballot was ostensibly over a procedural issue: whether to hold elections for party leader in April, as scheduled, or move up the primary to November. But both Sharon and Netanyahu said the ballot amounted to a vote of confidence in the prime minister, who has expressed hope the pullout would jumpstart long-stalled peace talks that would ultimately lead to the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
Sharon did not immediately react to the vote. But Likud lawmaker Roni Bar-On told Israel Radio that "the argument over whether or not Sharon's vision was the Likud's vision is over with this vote."
Netanyahu, who wants to replace Sharon as prime minister, disagreed.
In a statement conceding defeat, he predicted he would prevail in the primaries by tapping the dissatisfaction of Likud members who think Sharon has betrayed the party's nationalist roots.
The close vote on Monday demonstrated how bitterly divided the party remains, with many members opposed to Sharon's concessions to the Palestinians, he said.
"I expect to see this camp with all its force when it fights for the path of the Likud in the primaries and I have no doubt in the second phase we will win and the Likud will win," Netanyahu said.
He later said that some committee members voted "under the pressure of the governing tyrant."
Before the ballot, Sharon aides had suggested he would quit Likud if defeated and form a new party -- a move that could strengthen Israel's political center and improve chances of a Mideast peace deal because Sharon is popular among the general public.
The prospect of a new party continued to loom yesterday because Sharon's victory was so slim.
Labor Party members of his coalition government have also threatened to quit and force elections before the November 2006 timetable if peace efforts stall.
"If Sharon continues on this path, we clearly won't act for early elections," Communications Minister Dalia Itzik of the Labor party told Channel 1 TV. "But if he is rattled by the central committee and changes his path, we will of course work to bring him down."
Israeli aircraft fired missiles yesterday at three access roads in northern Gaza leading to staging areas for rocket attacks, the military said. Palestinian officials said one missile destroyed a bridge. Israeli helicopters also fired two missiles in the town of Khan Younis in southern Gaza.
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
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.