Sharon clinches narrow coalition

Jordan Times, 2/25/03

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GAZA CITY (Agencies) — The Israeli army pulled out of the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun Monday after a deadly 48-hour reoccupation that failed to stem Palestinian rocket attacks, while in Israel Prime Minister Ariel Sharon clinched a narrow right-wing government.

The army quit Beit Hanoun after destroying two road bridges and two access roads linking Beit Hanoun to Gaza City, an army spokesman said.

After the Israeli pullout, Palestinians pulled the body of a man from the rubble of a house.

Abdullah Al Saba, 52, led resistance to destruction of his family home during the Israeli incursion, when five buildings were knocked down and six other Palestinians were killed. Up to now, Palestinians had battled Israelis in the streets, but had not made a stand inside their homes targeted for demolition. The demolitions were aimed at isolating the town and prevent it being used by Hamas resistance fighters to launch homemade Qassam rockets into Israeli territory, the army said.

In Nablus in the West Bank, a Palestinian man died of a heart attack after Israeli soldiers trashed his house, Palestinian medical sources and relatives said.

Mohammad Msemi, 52, was woken before dawn by soldiers searching for his son Iyad, a member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Arafat's Fateh movement.

When the soldiers realised the wanted man was not there, they asked his family to get out of the house, the sources said.

When Mohammad Msemi went back inside and saw the damage done to his home, he suffered a heart attack and died.

The army also arrested 25 Palestinians overnight in its ongoing search for resistance activists.

Six Palestinians were killed and 20 others injured on Sunday during the raid on Beit Hanoun which the Israeli army entered with 20 tanks backed by helicopter gunships.

Despite the brief reoccupation, Hamas activists fired off several more of the rockets on the town of Sderot in southern Israel on Sunday without causing any casualties or serious damage.

Palestinian officials fear Israel, which has taken over almost the entire West Bank since last June, could try the same tactic in the Gaza Strip, although the narrow coastal territory is more densely populated and presents a more formidable target.

Meanwhile in Israel, Sharon secured a narrow one-seat majority for his fledgling coalition in parliament after signing up the resolutely secular centre-right Shinui Party.

Shinui was the dark horse in the Jan. 28 elections, leaping from just six votes to a key 15 on a pledge to sweep ultra-Orthodox parties out of government for the first time in more than 25 years.

The surprise move, which will almost certainly mean Likud jettisoning its traditional ultra-Orthodox allies Shas, came a day after Sharon secured a coalition deal with the National Religious Party (NRP), representing Jewish settlers in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The combination gives Sharon a narrow but reasonably stable majority of 61 deputies in the 120-seat parliament, but his alliance with the NRP effectively ruptured his coalition talks with the centre-left Labour Party.

Labour leader Amram Mitzna, who campaigned on a pledge to evacuate the Gaza Strip and scale back settlements in the West Bank, said that continuing the talks was “useless” after NRP leader Effi Eitam said Sharon had promised to allow settlements to grow “to accommodate population growth.”

Under the latest deal signed early Monday Shinui will be given five cabinet portfolios — Justice, Interior, National Infrastructures, Environment and Technology and Science, public radio said.

Shinui leader Yossef Tommy Lapid will also become deputy prime minister.

Shinui official Yossi Paristsky told the radio station: “The coalition government being formed is firmly engaged in the peace process with the Palestinians.”

He added that “the creation of a Palestinian state will not be specifically mentioned in the government programme. But it is clear that the government remains bound by Israel's international engagements, notably on the Oslo accords” of 1993 on Palestinian autonomy.

Likud late Sunday also launched negotiations with a coalition of extreme right-wing parties which has seven deputies but which is demanding two government portfolios.

The NRP is implacably opposed to a Palestinian state, but Eitam said the issue would not arise in the term of the present government, as for a state to be created the Palestinians had first to renounce “terrorism,” in reference to resistance to Israeli occupation, dump their leader Yasser Arafat and undertake massive reforms.

Sharon had hoped to build a broad centrist national unity coalition with Shinui and Labour, but had failed to convince Mitzna to sign up to his government.