Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak was to face a key showdown with his Labour party yesterday because he was to ask the deeply divided faction to back a coalition deal with prime minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu.
Barak and the hawkish Netanyahu reached an accord after personally overseeing negotiations that began in the small hours of the morning, Israeli radio reported.
In the deal, Labour — the once-dominant party that suffered its worst-ever election showing in last month’s general election — would secure five ministries in a Netanyahu Cabinet.
Barak, Israel’s most highly decorated soldier, will keep the defense portfolio, the radio reported.
The move would give Netanyahu a broad-based coalition government that he favors over a narrow right-wing Cabinet that may not be able to survive for long in the turbulent world of Israeli politics. In the agreement, Netanyahu would commit to continuing peace negotiations with the Palestinians and to respect past deals, the radio said.
The future government would also commit to work against so-called wildcat settlements in the occupied West Bank — those not authorized by the Israeli government, it reported.
Netanyahu, who has until April 3 to form a government, has already signed coalition agreements with the ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beitenu party and the ultra-Orthodox Shas party.
These give him the support of 53 members of parliament (MPs) — 27 from Likud, 15 from Yisrael Beitenu and 11 from Shas. If Labour votes to join, he would have a four-member coalition of 66 deputies in the 120-member parliament.
But the decision on whether to approve the agreement threatens to split Labour down the middle, as many in the party — now the fourth-largest in parliament — oppose joining a Cabinet led by Bibi, as Netanyahu is widely known in Israel.
Meanwhile, Israel’s military condemned soldiers for wearing T-shirts of a pregnant woman in a rifle’s cross-hairs with the slogan “1 Shot 2 Kills,” and another of a gun-toting child with the words, “The smaller they are, the harder it is.”
The T-shirts were worn by some Israeli Defense Force (IDF) soldiers to mark the end of basic training and other military courses, the newspaper Haaretz said.
The appearance of the T-shirts followed allegations of misconduct by Israeli troops during the three-week Gaza war.
Palestinian officials said about 1,400 Palestinians were killed, most of them civilians. Thirteen Israelis died, three of them civilians.
The army said it would not tolerate the T-shirts and would take disciplinary action against the soldiers involved, although it was not clear how many wore the shirts or how widely they were distributed.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including