Tough-talking new foreign minister Binyamin Netanyahu was to be sworn in on Wednesday as Israel prepares for early elections which the right is tipped to win, while in the Gaza Strip an armed Palestinian kills two Jewish settlers before being shot dead.
Israel and the Palestinians were set on Thursday to hold security talks to discuss a phased Israeli withdrawal from some occupied areas.
Palestinian gunmen shot and killed an Israeli motorist early on Thursday as Israel’s foreign minister warned that civilians would likely ”pay dearly” for the airstrike that killed a top Palestinian militant and 14 other people.
Israel said it was ready to make peace following US President George Bush’s Middle East policy speech on Monday, but only once the Palestinians stamp out ”terrorism” and start reforming their
leadership.
Mohammed Kashir’s intended objective yesterday was, by one definition in the shifting standards of the war for Palestine, a ”legitimate target”.
The latest Palestinian suicide bombing threatened on Tuesday to reignite the cycle of violence in the Middle East as Israel mulled its response to the attack which left at least 14 people dead and blew a hole in US hopes to revive the peace process.
Israeli armed forces seized more Palestinian areas on Thursday, after a second suicide bomb attack on Jerusalem in two days killed six Israelis including a five-year-old girl.
Israeli cabinet secretary Gideon Saar declined to rule out the army storming Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s office on Saturday as he made clear the Jewish state’s determination to capture some 20 security commanders holed up with him.
At least 10 people were killed and 45 injured on Thursday as a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up aboard a rush-hour bus in west Jerusalem.
Israeli troops entered Palestinian towns and villages in the West Bank overnight and arrested more than 70 Palestinians, the military said on Thursday, one of the largest such sweeps in two years of fighting.
A Palestinian suicide bomber killed himself and an Israeli policeman on Wednesday at a bus stop in the northern Arab town of Umm el-Fahm, in the first kamikaze attack inside Israel in six weeks, police said.
Israel pushed into West Bank towns early on Wednesday and vowed to occupy territory until Palestinian attacks are halted.
When Khalil Tufakji was 16, he was shot in the arm by soldiers during a protest in Jerusalem against occupation. Israel was not the occupier then and the soldiers, like the protesters, were Arabs.
Israel on Wednesday expelled to the Gaza Strip the brother and sister of a slain West Bank militant after a landmark court ruling.
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.