After a bitterly heated debate among feuding party luminaries, the Labor Central Committee on Monday night approved by a two-to-one margin calls by Shimon Peres to join a national unity government with Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon.
Britain’s security services have discovered a plot by an unidentified “Middle East group” to perpetrate a terrorist attack on London’s Underground rail network using the highly lethal sarin gas.
As is often the case in the Middle East, the first casualty in the recent wave of Arab-Israeli clashes was truth, which was baldly proven by the flagship print daily in the US this past week.
In what appears to be a growing divide between US and European approaches to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the European Union this week expressed support for the Palestinian position that Israeli concessions made since the Camp David talks should serve as the starting point for future negotiations.
Likud leader Ariel Sharon’s decisive win in last week’s election and the subsequent escalation in Palestinian violence have spurred calls for Labor to hurry up and join a unity coalition.
In separate statements circulating on Monday, militants in the main PLO faction Fatah threatened to “turn the lives of all the settlers into a living hell†and to kill Israeli reporters covering stories in Bethlehem.
Palestinian rioters and terrorists escalated the renewed intifada in recent days throughout Gaza and Judea/Samaria, including Jerusalem, in a move meant to “test†Israeli Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon even before he formally assumes office.
Arab foreign ministers met in Cairo over the weekend and demanded that Israeli Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon stick to the land-for-peace script laid out in UN resolutions and the Madrid and Oslo peace talks or else.
While Western envoys are pressing Israel to help alleviate raging Palestinian poverty caused by their own violent uprising, Arab states are withholding the bulk of $1 billion pledged towards the renewed intifada because they do not trust PLO chief Yasser Arafat with their money.
Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon is pressing on with his bid to persuade vanquished Israeli leader Ehud Barak and the Labor party to join a national unity government, but differences still remain over the coalition’s policy guidelines and the distribution of cabinet portfolios.
JERUSALEM (BP)–Arab reaction to the Feb. 6 election of Ariel Sharon ranged from wary to warlike, with moderate states waiting for Israel’s next prime minister to make his first moves and radical states calling his election a declaration of war, CNSNews.com reported Feb. 7.
Only hours before the Israeli Arab sector’s almost blanket boycott of the election for prime minister, an Arab Christian from Galilee was shot by Palestinian terrorists while serving in an IDF unit in southern Gaza.
US President Bill Clinton announced at the summit’s close this afternoon that a ceasefire agreement had been reached between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The major points are as follows:
Though widely expected, Likud candidate Ariel Sharon’s lopsided victory in Tuesday’s special election for prime minister was so potent, it drove incumbent Ehud Barak into political retirement and has left the Labor party in turmoil.
A Palestinian policeman was to be charged by an Israeli military court on Monday with intentional manslaughter for his part in the lynching of two IDF reservists in Ramallah last October.
Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh dismissed weekend reports of an imminent prisoner swap with Hizb’Allah as disinformation on Sunday, quashing rumors of an election eve surprise.
The four-month-old Palestinian intifada that has slowly toppled Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak from power, plagued him right up to the eve of the election, which promises to be yet another “day of rage.”
In the final days of the snap Israeli election for prime minister, incumbent Ehud Barak courted the Arab and Russian immigrant blocs, but had little chance of catching the surging Likud candidate Ariel Sharon, especially after the ultra-Orthodox jumped on his bandwagon.
If all those lopsided opinion polls are reliable, Israeli voters will install Ariel Sharon as their next prime minister on Tuesday, completing a most remarkable comeback for this native-born farmer whose long military and political record engenders considerable doses of both respect and scorn.
Senior Israeli defense officials are concerning that Iran and Iraq are training and equipping terrorist factions for joint operations across Israel’s northern border.