Jerusalem

Ariel Sharon has called on religious leaders to make it easier to become a Jew to revive the immigration that provides a buffer to the burgeoning Arab population. The prime minister’s remarks follow a call by one of his own Cabinet for a ban on immigration by secular Jews.

Israel and the United States are to launch a joint project to protect civil aviation from missile attacks, Israeli public radio reported on Wednesday.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Tuesday he had information that Iraq recently transferred weapons of mass destruction to Syria while Iraq expressed confidence it will come clear after UN inspections.

Israel signalled this week that in deference to Washington’s campaign against Iraq it will hold back from its usual tough response after Monday’s suicide bombing that killed 14 people. But it swiftly made life harder for Palestinians with a ban on drilling for water.

The former head of Israel’s intelligence service held secret talks with a senior Palestinian official six weeks ago in an attempt to curb the violence of the past two years. Israeli and Palestinian officials confirmed that the meeting took place in Qatar, but each side saw it differently.

Sixteen people were killed and dozens wounded early on Tuesday in a bomb attack on a rush-hour Israeli bus in southern Jerusalem.

ISRAEL on Sunday took a further step away from a threatened military offensive on the Gaza Strip while welcoming a new peace call by three Arab leaders as a positive sign that could revive talks.

The Israeli military is digging trenches around Jenin and Nablus, two West bank cities that have been hotbeds of Palestinian militants, according to an army magazine published this week.

Some 200 hardcore Jewish settlers continued to defy the army after two days of clashes in the West Bank Monday, creating tensions within Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s national unity government.

The Israeli siege of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s West Bank base went into its second day on Tuesday with the number of suspected Palestinian militants arrested climbing to 31.

A top bomb-maker from the Islamic group Hamas accused of orchestrating the deaths of more than 100 Israelis was shot dead along with one of his lieutenants by elite Israeli troops.

Israeli soldiers shot dead a Palestinian toddler in Gaza on Monday, hospital officials and witnesses said.

The Israeli army has seized documents suggesting the radical Islamic movement Hamas held talks in Cairo with Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement not to agree on curbing attacks on Israelis but to build its own links to Egypt, Israel media reports said Sunday.

Israeli police briefly detained the chief Muslim cleric in Jerusalem, Ikrema Sabri, and questioned him on Tuesday about a newspaper interview in which he was quoted as condoning suicide bombings, police said.

The Israeli army early on Tuesday entered the town of Jenin, hours after a suicide bomber killed two Israelis in an attack on a shopping mall in a Tel Aviv suburb.

Two Palestinian men were shot dead on Sunday in the northern West Bank, one in a gunbattle with Israeli troops, the other allegedly shot by a Jewish settler in an olive grove.

The radical Islamic Jihad movement has claimed responsibility for the pre-dawn kamikaze attack on an Israeli naval patrol boat that left four sailors wounded and the two Palestinian militants dead.

The head of Israeli military intelligence said on Saturday that no Iraqi missiles were so far positioned within striking distance of Israel and there were no signs of likely deployment soon.

Israeli Defence Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer has ordered an inquiry into the increasing number of Palestinian civilians, including children, being killed by the army, after a bloody week in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Israeli police restricted access to Friday prayers at annexed east Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque, as security forces went on high alert a day after a Palestinian suicide bombing in Tel Aviv.

The man behind last week’s car bombing and missile attack near Mombasa was identified as a Kenyan on the FBI’s most wanted list, reports an Israeli daily.

The Palestinians have refused an Israeli payment of ,7-million in unblocked customs duties and taxes because of conditions attached to its use.

Israeli officials hit out Thursday at CNN founder and AOL Time Warner Vice Chairman, Ted Turner, for accusing Israel of practising state terrorism, in comments made earlier this week.

Two years after the intifada erupted, the Palestinians appear to have lost the war on the political and diplomatic levels, but Israel has not won it yet, since the cycle of violence continues, with no solution shaping up.

Israel’s coalition government collapsed on Wednesday as Defence Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer and other Labour ministers quit right-wing Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s cabinet, throwing the country’s politics into turmoil and opening the door to snap elections.

Israeli settlers have set up a new ”rogue” settlement in the West Bank in response to a deadly Palestinian roadside attack.