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.
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