Israel's two main political parties, Kadima and Labor, have agreed to form a power-sharing government committed to further withdrawals from the occupied territories and reviving Israel's welfare state.
The Labor leader, Amir Peretz, said he had decided to join the administration, and will back the acting prime minister, Ehud Olmert, to remain in his position "out of national responsibility."
In the coming days, the Israeli president, Moshe Katsav, is expected to formally invite Olmert to form the next government. He then has up to 42 days to reach a coalition agreement with other parties to install a new administration.
Olmert said he was prepared to invite any party into his government that backs his "consolidation plan" to draw Israel's final borders by 2010 using the West Bank barrier to mark out the frontier.
It requires the dismantling of some smaller Jewish settlements, removing tens of thousands of Israelis living in the occupied territories, while annexing to Israel the larger settlement blocks that are home to about 350,000 people.
The two leaders did not comment on the distribution of Cabinet posts but Olmert told members of his Kadima party that a condition for Labor joining the administration was that it controls either the finance or defense ministry.
Israeli newspapers reported that Peretz would prefer finance but would consider becoming defense minister, provided Labor also had influence over budget priorities and that new social legislation was introduced to reverse the worst effects of the outgoing government's monetarist financial policies, which cut deep into social security spending.
"The state of Israel is facing very important challenges, and I am certain that the new government will really create a state which is nice to live in," Peretz said.
Kadima won 29 seats in the 120-seat parliament. Labor won 19. The two parties must now decide which of the smaller parties they wish to bring into government in order to ensure a stable majority in the Israeli parliament.
Olmert favored including the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party, which advocates redrawing Israel's borders to place Arab-Israeli towns inside a Palestinian state. But Peretz has vetoed the inclusion of a party that he has described as racist.
There are a number of other potential partners, including the newly successful Pensioners party and two ultra-orthodox religious parties.
But the once powerful Likud party, which was forced into fifth place in the election, seems likely to be left out of the government.
The Likud leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, said he could not accept unilaterally giving up control of territory while Hamas runs the Palestinian government, and in the absence of a peace agreement.
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