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/ 5 September 2003
United States and British officials are battling to save Mahmoud Abbas, the man they helped install as Palestinian prime minister, in a power struggle with Yasser Arafat that could bury what remains of the battered US-led ”road map” to peace.
The worst bus bombing in the past three years of intifada pushed the Palestinian leadership this week towards the confrontation with Islamic fundamentalists it has spent months trying to avoid.
More than 300 Palestinian men walked free from Israeli military prisons this week to be snubbed by their own leaders but hailed by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as evidence of Israel’s commitment to peace.
The Israeli government confiscated hundreds of hectares of Palestinian land on the West Bank this week for the purpose, Palestinians allege, of building settlements — in flagrant breach of commitments under the United States-led road map to peace.
It is a question rarely asked by Israel’s Jews, and almost never in public. But on Wednesday one Israeli MP, Roman Bronfman, cautiously wondered if Prime Minister Ariel Sharon did not have Jewish blood on his hands.
Israel declared total war on Hamas yesterday, with the Islamic resistance movement responding by ordering all its fighters to immediately mobilise and ”blow up the Zionist entity”.
Hamas delivered a blow to the Palestinian prime minister’s attempts to end attacks on Israel yesterday by breaking off all talks hours before a fresh round of negotiations aimed at establishing a ceasefire.
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/ 17 February 2003
Ariel Sharon’s government yesterday approved the immediate airlift of about 20 000 Ethiopians with Jewish roots who have spent years demanding the right to settle in Israel.
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/ 20 January 2003
Ariel Sharon yesterday dismissed European peace efforts as anti-Israeli and said only the US matters in deciding the fate of the Palestinians.
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/ 15 January 2003
British Prime Minister Tony Blair landed another blow to his battered relations with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Thursday by welcoming the leader of Israel’s opposition Labour Party to London just three weeks before a general election.