Israel Blows Up Home of Resistance Bomber

27/02/2003| IslamWeb

Israeli occupation troops blew up the home of a resistance bomber in the West Bank and thwarted a car bombing on Thursday, hours before Prime Minister Ariel Sharon  was to present his new hard-line government to parliament for approval. Israel's occupation soldiers activity against the Palestinians has not halted despite an unusual snowstorm that debilitated Jerusalem and parts of the West Bank for two days.

Israeli occupation soldiers operating near the West Bank town of Tulkarem found 20 kilograms of explosives near a car that activists were planning to use as a car bomb, the occupation army said. It said the occupation soldiers blew up the bomb in a controlled explosion.

In the Balata refugee camp near Nablus, occupation troops blew up the home of a Palestinian activist who attacked the Jewish settlement of Shavei Shomron in May.

The activist was the only one killed in the attack. Due to the refugee camp's density, two other homes collapsed when the bomber's home was blown up, Palestinian witnesses said.

The occupation army says it demolishes the homes of activists to deter Palestinians from carrying out attacks on Israelis.

Palestinians condemn the action as a violation of international law and as collective punishment.

On the political front, Sharon delivered a surprise blow to his main party rival, Benjamin Netanyahu , when he ousted him as foreign minister and offered him the less-senior finance ministry posting in his Cabinet. Sharon was scheduled to present his new government for parliamentary approval at 4 p.m. on Thursday.

Although Netanyahu initially rejected the offer, Israeli media reported that it appeared he was reconsidering. According to the media reports, if the deal goes through, Netanyahu would have more authority than previous finance ministers.

The country's finance minister is faced with the difficult task of pulling Israel out of a recession that has persisted in six of the past seven years and worsened due to more than two years of Israeli-Palestinian fighting.

Analysts said citizens will blame the finance minister if the economy, plagued by high unemployment and inflation, continues to falter, possibly hurting his future chances of being prime minister.

"Netanyahu knows that finance minister is a trap that Sharon has placed for him, but he doesn't plan on being finance minister. He plans on using the post to sharpen his positions in preparation for running for prime minister," political analyst Hanan Crystal said.

Silvan Shalom, the outgoing finance minister, will be foreign minister in the new government. Although he has little experience in international diplomacy, he is considered a Sharon stalwart. Analysts noted this morning that Shalom was the first member of the outgoing Cabinet to support expelling Yasser Arafat .

Sharon's new government - with a slew of hawkish ministers and two extreme-right parties - will most likely not fulfill the prime minister's pledge of advancing negotiations with the Palestinians and making the "painful concessions" he has said he is prepared to make in order to reach peace.

"There are no prospects for peace," political analyst Gerald Steinberg said. "The best anyone can expect is a gradual reduction in friction over a number of years."

The National Religious Party, which supports controversial settlements in the Palestinian territories, and the extreme-right National Union, which has members that support the expulsion of Palestinians to Jordan, are key members of Sharon's new coalition.

The more moderate Shinui party is the third member of his government, giving it a comfortable majority of 68 in the 120-seat Knesset. Shinui supports peace efforts in principle, but its leaders say the issue is moot for now and are concentrating instead on a domestic agenda of reducing the influence of religion in Israel.

The coalition's guidelines are not expected to include acceptance of the so-called "road map" to peace that emerged from Mideast mediators - the United States, European Union , United Nations  and Russia. The mediators have called for a Palestinian state and an end to Israeli settlement-building in the West Bank and Gaza.

But President Bush  said in a speech Wednesday that the United States would try to push through the peace proposal after it disarms Saddam Hussein . He called on the Palestinians to reform their government and halt violence, saying that then Israel would have to halt Jewish settlement activity in the West Bank and Gaza Strip .

Sharon's office said he told Bush on Wednesday that Israel was committed "to any road map that accurately reflects the president's vision of peace" - a reference to Bush's speech last year in which he called for eventual Palestinian statehood, but also for a change in the Palestinian leadership.

PHOTO CAPTION

Palestinian women are seated in front of their demolished houses in the Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip, February 27, 2003. Israel Defense Occupation forces entered the camp after midnight on Wednesday and demolished two houses and damaging several others, in an area beside the border with Egypt. REUTERS/Jose Manuel Ribeiro
- Feb 27 6:40 AM