The Israeli Cabinet yesterday unanimously approved voting in east Jerusalem, defusing a crisis that threatened to derail Palestinian elections.
The vote was the first major political test for acting prime minister Ehud Olmert, the likely political heir to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who remained comatose in a Jerusalem hospital yesterday, 11 days after suffering a massive stroke. Later in the day, Attorney General Meni Mazuz was expected to notify Olmert that he will continue to serve as acting prime minister through Israel's March 28 elections, Justice Ministry spokesman Yaakov Galanti said.
Mazuz will continue to define Sharon as temporarily, rather than permanently, incapacitated because doctors treating the prime minister at Jerusalem's Hadassah Hospital have not yet offered a prognosis, the Haaretz daily reported yesterday. A declaration of permanent incapacitation, which would require Cabinet to name a successor to Sharon, would be irreversible.
Hospital spokesman Ron Krumer said yesterday that Sharon's condition -- critical but stable -- was unchanged.
Sharon has failed to awaken since doctors began lifting his heavy sedation nearly a week ago, prompting concerns that he might never emerge from his coma.
Olmert, Sharon's ally and a proponent of further territorial concessions to the Palestinians, has quietly been easing the turbulence created by Sharon's illness. His ability to end the crisis over voting in disputed Jerusalem was seen as a first litmus test of his political skills.
Jerusalem is the epicenter of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with both sides claiming the city as its capital. Israel initially planned to bar Palestinian voting in east Jerusalem because candidates from the armed Hamas group were to appear on the ballot -- a stand that provoked Palestinian threats to cancel the election because of Jerusalem's symbolic significance.
But last week, Israel reversed course after coming under pressure from the US, which didn't want the voting scuttled because it is eager to promote democracy in the region.
According to the proposal Cabinet approved yesterday, elections in Jerusalem will go ahead so long as members of armed groups like Hamas, which call for Israel's destruction, won't be allowed to run.
"I welcome this decision," Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said, calling on international election observers to ensure that election campaigning and the voting wouldn't be impeded.
Hamas is expected to make a strong showing in the overall balloting and possibly dominate parliament, having been bolstered by its clean-hands image and growing violence in Palestinian-run areas.
Over the weekend, US officials warned that millions of dollars of aid could be in jeopardy if the Islamic group were to join the Palestinian government.
With the east Jerusalem voting crisis resolved, Olmert faced another immediate test -- a standoff with Jewish settlers in the volatile West Bank city of Hebron, where 500 settlers live among 170,000 Palestinians. Eight settler families had been given until yesterday to evacuate a neighborhood they took over four years ago. They are to be removed forcibly in a month's time if they disregard the evacuation order, as they are expected to do.
In recent days, hundreds of settlers outraged by the order have hurled stones at Palestinian homes in Hebron and tried to force their way into areas of the city that are off-limits to them.
also see story:
The new vacuum in Israeli politics will prove difficult to fill
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was