More FUEL ON THE FIRE!...Israel just Can't STOP!...and BUSH can't/WON'T do a thing to pressure them....and it all adds up to more Americans being killed due to the Arab world CORRECTLY equating the US with ISRAEL
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Israel Weighs Major W. Bank
Construction
By MARK LAVIE
JERUSALEM (AP) - Israel is considering
building thousands more homes in West
Bank settlements, in line with Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon's plan to keep large chunks of
the territory but give up the Gaza Strip,
security officials said Tuesday.
In a possible boost for Sharon's Gaza
withdrawal plan, Israel's attorney general
dropped a corruption case against Sharon,
ending months of uncertainty over the prime
minister's political future.
Attorney General Meni Mazuz told reporters he
is not indicting Sharon on bribe-taking charges
because the evidence ``does not bring us anywhere close to a reasonable
chance of conviction.''
The decision clears the way for Sharon to court the opposition Labor Party, which
supports a Gaza pullback and has said it would only consider joining the
government if the prime minister is cleared of corruption allegations.
Sharon needs Labor to restore his parliamentary majority. Several coalition
hardliners defected or were dismissed over the Gaza plan, leaving him with a
minority government.
In the meantime, Labor has prevented Sharon's government from being toppled,
by abstaining from no confidence votes in parliament.
However, Labor leader Shimon Peres warned that his party should not be taken
for granted. ``We're not in anyone's pocket,'' Peres told Israel Army Radio.
Media reports said a decision to join the coalition could split Labor and only about
15 of the party's 19 legislators would follow Peres into the government.
Sharon's plan of ``unilateral disengagement'' calls for a withdrawal from all of
Gaza and four West Bank settlements by September 2005. Sharon has said that
in exchange, he wants to keep and expand several large settlement blocs in the
West Bank - a demand that has won tacit support from President Bush.
Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz has asked the military to draw up plans within three
months for building thousands of homes in three of the settlement blocs - Gush
Etzion, Maale Adumim and Ariel, the Israeli daily Maariv reported Tuesday.
Mofaz met Monday with settler leaders in Gush Etzion, and security officials said
he told them he would consider their request to authorize between 1,000 and
2,000 new homes in the area. Mofaz told settlers he would make a decision
within three months, the officials said on condition of anonymity.
Shaul Goldstein, the deputy head of the Yesha Council, the settlers' umbrella
group, confirmed that he spoke to Mofaz about new building in settlements, but
said no specific numbers were discussed.
Maariv reported that new construction is also being considered in Maale Adumim
and Ariel, the West Bank's two largest settlements.
The Defense Ministry would say only that Mofaz told settlers he would consider
their request to help with some of their problems.
Peres denounced the plans for building up settlements in the West Bank while
talking about evacuating Gaza.
Eventually ``they will do in the West Bank what they are doing in Gaza, they will
accept our position'' that settlements must be evacuated, Peres said. ``If they
build more, annex more, they will waste more money,'' Peres told a party meeting
in Tel Aviv.
Sharon has said he plans to expand settlement blocs Israel intends to keep
under a future peace deal.
The Palestinians want all of the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, territories
Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast War, for their future state. They have been
deeply suspicious of the Gaza plan because of the implied tradeoff - Israel giving
up Gaza while strengthening its hold on parts of the West Bank.
Israel also hopes withdrawing from Gaza will improve its security.
It was not clear whether Gaza settlers would be moved to the West Bank. Sharon
has considered such an option, but it was vetoed by the Bush administration.
``We call on the American administration for direct and immediate intervention to
revoke and stop all these plans,'' Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat said.
In violence Tuesday, a Palestinian vehicle apparently rigged with explosives blew
up in the Gaza Strip after Israeli soldiers fired on it. No one was hurt, the army and
Palestinian witnesses said. Two Palestinian militant groups, Islamic Jihad and
the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, claimed responsibility for the explosion, saying they
detonated the vehicle by remote control.
Two Palestinian militants were killed Monday evening in an Israeli airstrike in the
Balata refugee camp, on the outskirts of the West Bank city of Nablus.
The targeted attack killed Khalil Marshoud, local leader of the Al Aqsa militia, a
violent offshoot of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement. The military said Marshoud
was behind a number of attacks against Israelis.
Another Palestinian militant was killed and a third person was seriously
wounded, witnesses said.
Israel killed two other Al Aqsa leaders in a missile attack in Nablus on May 2.
Soldiers also shot and killed an 18-year-old Palestinian while firing at stone
throwers Tuesday in Balata, witnesses said. The military said soldiers fired at a
man armed with an assault rifle.
In Bethlehem, the army demolished the family home of a fugitive activist of the
Islamic Jihad movement, the military and the man's relatives said.
Mazuz informed Sharon of the decision to drop the corruption case by phone.
At the center of the corruption case were suspicions that Israeli businessman
David Appel paid Sharon's son Gilad hundreds of thousands of dollars to help
push through a lucrative real estate deal in Greece, at a time when Sharon was
foreign minister in 1999. In the end, the project did not go through.
Appel has been indicted for allegedly paying bribes but under Israeli law,
prosecutors must prove that the recipient of a bribe was aware of the improper
payments. Sharon denied wrongdoing.
Even with the end of the investigation, Sharon's legal problems may not be over.
Israeli prosecutors are also probing Sharon and his sons for allegedly receiving
an illegal $1.5 million loan from a South African businessman. Sharon has
denied any wrongdoing in the case.
The leftist opposition party Yahad said it plans to appeal Mazuz' decision to the
Supreme Court. |
