As Palestinian President Yasser Arafat won British backing for an independent state on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon faced fall-out from his dual approach of assassinating militants while bowing to US pressure for peace. Meanwhile, hawkish ministers kept their vows to resign from his national unity administration.
Senior Likud sources were reported Tuesday as saying that the resignations of two far-right Israeli cabinet ministers - Avigdor Lieberman and Rehavam Ze'evi - would lead to early elections, according to Haaretz.
Tourism Minister Ze'evi and National Infrastructures Minister Lieberman said they would not withdraw their letters of resignation from the national unity government despite pressures to do so, Israel Radio reported Tuesday. Lieberman said his resignation was final and that all of those trying to change his mind were wasting their time.
Lieberman and Ze'evi handed in their letters of resignation on Monday, after Sharon decided to withdraw the Israeli army from Palestinian-controlled areas of the West Bank city of Hebron, which had been seized in an effort to stop firing on the city's Jewish enclave, said the Tel Aviv-based daily.
Palestinians, meanwhile, accused Israel of killing a militant in a car bombing in the West Bank town of Nablus, the second member of the hardline Islamic resistance group Hamas to be killed in 24 hours.
Palestinains have spent the last 12 months fighting against 34 years of Israeli military occupation of land the Jewish state conquered in 1967. Around 700 Palestinians, including around 100 children, have been killed by occupation troops. Resistance fighters have killed nearly 200 Israelis in the same period.
Monday's killing of Hamas member Ahmad Mershud appeared to bear out Sharon's warning that the "liquidation" of senior Hamas militant Abdul Rahman Hamad the day before was "not the first, nor the last" such operation, said AFP.
Israel resumed its widely condemned hunt-and-kill policy against suspected Palestinian resistance leaders on Sunday, for the first time since Arafat reached a truce deal with Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres on September 26.
A Hamas leader in Nablus, Adnan Asfur, said the slaying of Mershud was "a crime which confirms that the Israeli government's policy is to continue assassinating Palestinian freedom fighters."
Palestinian Parliament Speaker Ahmed Qorei said the assassination policy threatened to crush the ceasefire.
The killing came as Israel made certain moves to hold up its side of the truce deal, easing restrictions at some of its roadblocks in the West Bank and pulling tanks out of the Palestinian self-rule zone of Abu Sneinah in Hebron.
The withdrawal caused protests from Jewish settlers and prompted the hawkish Israel Beitenu-National Union bloc to announce it was leaving the government.
The walk-out was the most serious crisis in the seven-month-old government, but Sharon's national unity administration will still have a comfortable majority in the Knesset assembly.
Israel Beitenu chief and Infrastructure Minister Avigdot Lieberman said, "People who voted for Sharon largely voted against the Oslo accords" of 1993 which paved the way to Palestinian self-rule in fragments of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The peace moves also caused a stir in the army after the chief of staff, General Shaul Mofaz, earned a sharp reprimand from Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer for publicly criticizing the cabinet decision on security grounds.
Meanwhile, Radio Israel reported that settler leaders had said that Sharon did not give “satisfactory” answers regarding security in meeting Monday night – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
